Hi there,
I couldn't get any info in the wiki on how collection of materials will work, but seeing the existence of 'mines' and knowing how it worked in Fonline games before - I suspect that crafting is still half bland and half boring.
So my suggestion is (sorry if you have an equally fun system in place):
Instead of going to a mine to hit a rock with a hammer and going back with it to your base just to be killed on the way - let's change it to going to the mines (where NPC miners are doing the hammering) to sing up for a caravan which will pay with resources for each successful run. When starting a caravan there's a few minute timer for more people of similar level/equipment to join in (global info that a caravan is about to leave?) and for opposing forces to join for the raider team (of similar level/equipment to the original caravan party). If gathering the opposing team is not successful then a random encounter is played instead.
Either way there's a caravan style fight, your group moves to one of the cities, you're paid with resources and any loot after the fight (automatically distributed).
Please?
Crafting tends to be fun, but the material collection is usually too tedious.