As many people know panning is a good way for getting resources early on (especially copper) and I love it, but I caught myself ignoring it completely after getting my first copper pickaxe. I think the main problem is that you start having more things to do after you progress past the stone stage (smelting, cooking, casting, smithing, exploring, farming, taking care of animals and building etc.) and you simply may not have time to sit in a pound and pan sand and gravel you have stocked up in your base. So I was thinking, what about giving player option to automate the process later on? Panning was just one way of placer mining techniques, in VS I would like to see something similar to:
Rocker Box
Drywasher
Sluice box
After playing with windmills, gears, hoppers and axles I could see those things work in this game. It wouldn't be 100% automated of course because it would still require player input at some point but at least you could get resources out of gravel and sand later in the game without constant player's input.