I know this is a me thing but one thing I like about your game is that it is a universe discovery game that isn't framed in exploitation and conquest. Extracting resources would change that. As it is in all games I play and love, not a deal breaker even for me, much less for the rest of humanity.
One idea for a mechanic that would encourage long term play would be to complete collections. I don't know how long your lists of name elements are and how likely it is to get repeats but it would be fun to create a room of all yogurt related instruments. Or maybe it would make more sense to use the additional properties for it. All stolen instruments or some such. I think something along these lines would be much in keeping with the museum theme.
Viewing post in THE OMEGA REACH jam comments
Thanks for thinking about that. I might have been going overboard and started thinking in terms of one of those dream every-games? I’ve seen plenty that try to accomplish that and fall flat due to lack of vision or cohesion. And you’re right that I want the opposite of that!
Without diving into the source code, there are tens of thousands of unique instrument names. But I could see some connections that could be made to group them already as you say. Something I wanted to explore but didn’t have time for is trying to tie certain instrument quirks to the specific types of planets and moons that you find them on. For example: terran worlds could produce certain types of instruments, often of legendary status, so you might collect 10 of them to unlock a special room or unique instrument as an achievement.
Cheers!