Rust is based largely around resources and Fuel being ‘very’ scarce though and the quarry is less a quarry and more a machine that converts fuel into other things, as you do not mine remove the landscape, which means that you do not need to balance it with normal player mining-speed of the terrain.
For interesting mechanics though, there are going to be different materials with different properties and weapons and tools can be enhanced with other properties as well so that at least will be interesting, I don’t know if the team is going to expand on the machine and energy system but those could become pretty puzzle like in time too.
Also crafting was at least at some point planned to have some efficiency scaling mini game so they try to look at ways to make it a bit more than “plop stuff into a machine” Crafting: Workbench GUI