Why the Settlers mechanic currently feels mandatory + easy solution

Currently Settlers feels mandatory for basically everyone because it's the only mechanic that passively generates currency without needing to invest any atlas points.

All the ways to invest into this mechanic, such as atlas nodes and scarabs, involve ores, yet the most efficient ways to get currency from it only involve crops and dust, which are obtained passively with no real investment.

My solution: Make it so that shipments and mappers require ores farmed in maps in order to run. This way players have to choose to invest in the mechanic if they want to profit (like with every other league mechanic in the game) and it would make the settlers atlas nodes actually useful.
Also the crops should be removed or be added as a reward for doing something active in maps.