Something I plan for my modpack (not sure if it's possible, but even if it's not, we could make a suggestion and back it up).
Make different alien species drop different meat.
It's all cooked in "cooked alien meat" for eating, however there could be a different purpose!
As another option, make a different drop for the same reason and leave the meat alone.
Then there would be a DNA Extractor furniture where you need to gather 10 or some arbitrary amount of meat/blood of the same type. Then you would get different polymers from that which you could use to upgrade all tiers of armors.
Example of polymers you could get from "creature research":
- hardening, increases armor value
- galvanic, increases energy generation
- thermal, reduces fire damage
- adsorbing, reduces poison damage, maybe even negates it if it's full set (for good life in poisoned worlds)
- insulative, increases warmth
- many other options.
Now if it was a rare drop and only from specific type of a random creature, you would have a reason to travel around the universe to search for worlds with said creatures.
Similar idea could be applied to polymers for weapons, be it the same polymers or totally different.
Just an idea, there's a whole field we could brainstorm.