I'm doing a no death run to day 100 and I'm now on day 70-something... I have every item I want for my final build, and I've started feeling like there's really no reason to loot stuff anymore. I could literally just sit in my base for the next 30 days and probably make it (besides replacing/repairing some traps, but that's a mining issue, not a looting one).
There's one thing I'd like to see to make looting way more important in late game, and that's item degradation. I feel like (can't remember for sure) there was something like that several alhpas ago, but not now. All I would want is for items to lose something like 5-10% of their max durability each time they're repaired, and then eventually they would become unusable. It would give me a reason to swap out my lvl6 steel knuckles for one of the other 3 lvl6 steel knuckles I have in a storage box, Same would apply to tools, vehicles, armor, and anything else with durability.
If it's not gonna happen, I can just teach myself to write mods after gold and then do that, but I wanted to see if others want the same thing, or have other thoughts about the ultra-late game goals and how to stay engaged in looting