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Oh right — I could do a local HFS+ non-encrypted disk with encrypted Time Machine (I assume) — that just slipped my mind.

This is what I do. It's the happy path and works well.

It seems most of the problems with Time Machine happen when you try and run it over SMB. It's not that surprising when you realise what it is doing under that scenario. It creates a virtual disk on the remote and then formats it with APFS. You don't need much to go wrong to corrupt the backup in this scenario.

It's mainly for multiple people in a household to back up to one location, especially if some have laptops that are often not on desks. Those Airport APs used to also let you attach disks for this. You could even do it over a VPN.

I so miss these Airport APs, I really don’t understand why the product line was cancelled, it was perfect.

Same, I still have one for random purposes. Still the easiest and most polished router/AP, has lots of features.

I switched to Borg on Linux server from local attached Time Machine disk after once I went to a long trip and forgot the disk at home.