For a game that need high part count to get aesthetic looks of a craft, it surprise me that this feature hasn't been added to the base game and not even any modder works on it. Doesn't need to be flexible like combining any part you want but simply just combining any part of the same type or even just the "fuel tank" part since it the most used part. Doesn't even need to contain fuel, just some empty part is merged with many other empty "fuel tank" part that being use as decoration to increase detail of a craft. Each mesh and texture(and maybe collider) is the only thing that merged part have from each individual part while everything else merged into one. This can increase performance without sacrificing the aesthetic of craft.
