I don't see how this is such a "huge" concern unless we try it.

IIRC we didn't not add rotting and fattening because the balance was a huge concern. Initially I had both, and you add to keep your sheep next to the corral aura so they would produce more food.

Well, I don't know exactly how the code works, but when workers are done building, they keep building other stuff, when the are done cutting a tree, they keep cutting other trees... can't tasks also be kept when garrisoned? After all, their HP is kept, so there's some sort of memory going on... EDIT: what I mean is, tasks at the time of sounding an alarm should override rally points. Or at least for that to be an option.

How is the game supposed to know that you don't want those units to go to your chosen rally point?

Agreed. I may introduce a Pull Request for it and get rotting into r29. It adds another interesting dimension to raiding and honestly, it's a pretty much expected feature for those familiar with RTS.