How would the concept you describe here be located "outside of the PvP sandbox"?
When not competing against other groups of survivors (players) in raiding abandoned urban areas or even FEDRA outposts, you'd be at a dynamic (and ever changing throughout the season) hub area that is the camp/settlement of the specific faction that you're playing at during that season. At that hub area, based on the amounts and kind of resources you've gathered during your incursions (PvP sandbox), you would be investing your resources and making tough decisions that, similarly to the special events found in roguelikes such as Slay the Spire or FTL, might have positive or negative impacts on your ability to have your faction make it to the end of the season, as well as the amount of rewards you'd be given then based on how many survived, etc.
For instance, this is what a 1.5 hours session would look like:
- Week 12 (in-game) of the Gun Dealers faction
- You (get into the matchmaking for the extraction mode) venture into a nearby rural town, searching for medical supplies (your suggested goal for the incursion) as around a dozen survivors from your group are in bed following a tougher than usual winter season.
- You have no luck after inspecting a handful of abandoned drug stores and don't feel well-equiped enough to take on a FEDRA settlement (AI enemies) that might have the supplies you're after. Rather than risking dying (and losing one of your most experienced scouts), you decide to cut your losses (extract) for the time being after finding some additional ammo and canned foods around the map.
- Once you return to your faction's settlement (you are back at the hub lobby area), one of the men you left on guard duty (an NPC presenting one of the aforementioned events to you) says that one scout from a traders caravan has approached them with the offer to exchange a large amount of our guns inventory for the medicine we've been needing to get by in the short term.
- The implications of this moral dilemma are the following: parting away with so many of your guns may decrease your camp's self-defense capabilities in the future, but getting that medicine may help save the lives of survivors whose knowledge (maybe one of them is a blacksmith that provides you with the perk of restoring the endurance of your melee arsenal ahead of each new incursion) might prove vital for your long-term goals of keeping your faction alive, although with more people to feed.
- You choose to accept the deal and part ways with a handful of pistols and revolvers, a couple of hunting rifles, a double-barrell shotgun and an assault rifle in pristine condition. Your people begins to heal thanks to the medicine.
- Week 13
- You die during an incursion and lose your best-equipped scout. One less member of your faction.
- Week 14
- Your new scout is chased out of a major city by a well-organized local totalitarian regime. In getting out alive at all costs, you wasted more ammo and resources than you extracted with.
- Week 15
- Another fruitless expedition, at least when it comes to replenishing your factions' weapons inventory.
- [Random event] Over the night after your return, the camp is raided in a flash by some motorized gang. Due to your guards being light on firepower, two of them ended up shot and the attackers got away taking three women with them. Bunch of degenerates.
That entire series of events ended up impacting the morale of your faction on various levels and ultimately your group's ability to remain alive until the end of the season, with you having to rethink your strategy and evaluate how to better play your cards from now on.