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the number of times ive messed with texture modding and i see mirrored/flipped textures in the files and now i see why that is. (i would have said this in their post, but replies are limited)

I like this framing. It appeals to the metrics-obsessed VC money AND the people doing the work.

If you're in a production setting and you aren't working with 128px textures, just arrange things for ease of use instead of perfectly optimized texel density Nobody's gonna notice except your overbearing cinematic director

When I'm working in godot, have patterns that I use that require a few extra steps and are slightly less optimal, but they allow me to use godot's inspector gui to customize things moving forward, and that makes me able to make the most of the game engine and editor as a tool for me.

also spending a few extra triangles can help you save tons of texture space - something people with very superficial 3d knowledge don't even have the chops to consider when they've been hard conditioned to think "less tris = objectively better"

Otherwise, I agree; designing for humans is more important than designing for computers. Your perf issues will rarely be because you have one poorly optimized texture (although it could be from lots of poorly optimized textures). There's always ways to make up the difference if you need to