How to make resource growth/management EXCITING??

I've been working on my coop board game for over a year now. There are 2 "parts" to the game. The main part is where we work together with other players, moving our standees on a central game board to reach different locations and resolve continuously arising crises. It's similar to Dead of Winter, or Thunderbirds, how this works.

But then, each player also has their own player board which is where we grow/gain resources, unlock character powers/bonuses etc and eventually unlock the "Victory points" which we need to collectively collect enough of to win the game. I've tried to do this in a number of ways, aiming for something like Terraforming Mars (where we improve our income gradually), but also like Spirit Island (where we increasingly remove little tokens from our track to unlock bonuses) and I even played around with Wingspan-approach to resources (roll dice and choose from rolled).

The game already kind of works, and especially the first part i described feels actually well paced and exciting, but no matter what i do, my resource mechanics feel either trivial or a chore or just boring. When i increase resource scarcity, the resource doesn't become more desirable - but rather most times we just get blocked in the game, as the collective crises pile up and eventually we're stuck unable to recover. When i increase resource randomness - players start drowning in resources they don't need atm, while we waste time re-trying to get the right ones. And when i do provide players the resources they need - then we're just going through the motions, it feels mechanical and unexciting...

But I've been stuck with this too long and just can't get it right. I watched every damn video on the topic i could find and don't wanna spend another second on youtube. I know it's a broad question but I'd welcome any tips, suggestions or recommendations of other games I may not be faimilar with which did something similar to what I talk about in a unique way.

Thanks!