I don't know if this exactly what we want, but it would solve several problems. I envision this would generally be done on routing but also maybe a checkbox like the "exclude dependencies".
Scenario A: You file is removed from the publishing server (ticket to remove orphan for example, but we screw up). One cannot republish that file unless they make a change to the outgoing content.
Scenario B: You want all your files to regenerate SearchG2 entries based on some new field you want to crawl for example.
Scenario C: Dependencies are messed up, and you want to republish all the dependencies.