SharePoint On Premises Farm Restoration Question:

my unofficial supervisor broke the farm: I asked him to copy over a production content database to the test SQL Server we were using for the new farm I was building out. He accidentally overwrote the SharePoint 2016 Configuration database. His remedy: he used a database snapshot to restore the database to a point in time. He also may have restored the CA server to near that same point in time. 

Now, we have had several issues:

1. patches that were installed show as not installed.
2. the farm server went from "No action required" to "Needs Installation"
3. The Search Service App won't communicate on port 808, even though it's open.
4. The Search Service App was re-provisioned and the same symptoms persist.

I believe that our issues are the result of this "restoration method" my supervisor employed. Can someone provide some concrete reasoning why the restoration method wouldn't work? I've explained that it severs the ties between the farm features and the configuraiton database. But it would be great to have a more expansive explanation.