You are just limiting yourselfes. Play with a friend togethe. Talk with em ingame and in character, instead of trololo in IRC or even ugly mumble.
Dont limit yourself to only one task. If your gathering cooldown is up, go and hunt something. Craft something, repair something, go with your friends to a town, do some bartering, do some killing etc.
As this is a sandbox game you can blame yourself when the game feels like a sidedish for you. It's only a lack of creativity and imagination.
Kill something for what?
Craft something for what?
Hunt something for what? Only if junktown scouts/regulators/marauders for SMGs, so I can kill Sha Enin regulary.
Go with friends to a town for what?
Gather resources for what?
The only way how I can be creative is to make an alt with traps and scienece tagged, dig HQ minerals and explode Sha Enin instead of bursting him, but it time consuming, and isn't fun after ~30th explosion.
Hinkley arena doesn't work, Sha Enin is dead or I have more than -1.5 rep, means there's nothing to do.
Going into unguarded town for PvP in gear is useless, because you'll be instakilled by some bluesuit with hunting rifle, so I going there in bluesuit too, but it's not that fun because everyone dying too fast.
In Hinkley you don't care about gear, because it's not yours and it's infinite, so you can wear BA and if die by instakill, then just wait till one of teams win, and next round you'll probably not die by instakill, because it's like only 1/3 / 1/4 of rounds, taking in account that I have 10 LK, and as I know insta chance depending on it, so I can't imagine how someone with 6 LK can wear something valuable at TC, because some moron with a mauser can simply click "the head" or "the eyes" and he'll die.
So gear is nothing.
Crafting is useless, you'll die by instakill anyway.
Use bluesuit and huting rifle/SMG/Minigun/Laser rifle.
Everything is possible to get on encounters.
In RT with 200 HP, bluesuit and x1 thoughness and 10mm SMG with x2 BRD and 15% critical chance, I alone can kill master army and get laser rifles and miniguns (mostly of stupid AI and slowly walking muties in RT).
SMGs are easy to get.
Hunting rifles are junktown scounts and crazies.
If you don't like bluesuiter model, you can buy jacket for 250 caps each almost at any vendor, or exchange it for some loot.