A limit on foundation area coverage might help a little but the lag I only suffer is from bases with multiple wind turbines and flashing lights. It's rare I use two turbines and normally get away with one for a small farm and lighting. I have gone through five wipes so far (i think) and only have about $170K net worth but find it's more than enough. I may use up $20K in a wipe but build it back up by end of that wipe. Since explosives can not be sold I have not bothered much this wipe but still pushed my net worth up $10K.
Building massive farms just to feed greed hurts other players with lower PC specs myself included. At my age and financial situation, I can not afford the latest and greatest so get by with a AMD FX-8300, 16gb of RAM and a RX580 4GB.
I even tried US Scourge this wipe as I had a good time there a few wipes ago. I couldn't even get past a few areas as my FPS dropped so far. Just to many huge bases covered in flashing lights and turbines galore. I just gave up in the end.
If RUST keeps becoming a bigger resource hog, I'll be going back to other games I had taken a break from like Elite Dangerous which funny enough I have no issues in running.