Merging meshes with defered decals

Hi,

I have multiple meshes that looks like that

The green boxes are using defered decals. I tried to merge these boxes with the background wall and the yellow grid.
If I do not merge the materials I get a mesh with 9 material slots. How bad is this for the performance? And why it creates so many slots even when the material of the green boxes are the same?

When I merge the materials too it looks like that

Is there a way to merge defered decals too?
If not which is the best way to build “prefabs”? Shall I build my wall with the boxes and then copy&paste the wall for my map? or shall I merge it and use the 9 slotted merged mesh? Or shall I build a blueprint component and use that for the wall? I want to know which way is the best way to not getting performance problems later.

Thank you and sry for bad english.

Afaik, nope, you cant merge in deferred decals. 9 materials per mesh is pretty bad.
For your purpose, geometry decals are probably more suitable.

Ty very much. Can you tell me or show me what these are?