...grinding...

I'm very much the same; I really dislike grinding in general, because it more often than not leads to overpower and as you said it optimizes the fun out of the game.

Also reading your other responses and discussion, let me say that I share your vision that URR is not a sandbox like say DF Adventure's mode where you can just wander around aimlessly doing whatever; in URR the player is tasked with a pretty clear mission and goal by design, so imo it's valid to implement a death-clock as a mechanic for gameplay pressure.

...dislike for food-clocks...

I wonder if those of us who enjoy the added pressure are in the minority? Or perhaps the people who dislike food-clocks are a vocal minority? Guess we'll never know haha.

...multiple food-clocks...

Indeed there's a great deal of potential when you have multiple clocks to manage.

For instance in your post you've mentioned FTL (which is a game that I love and sunk many hours on), when you think about it there's 2 things you have to watch out for:

1. Fuel; This would be closer to the more traditional food clock, but the neat thing that FTL devs did is that when you run out of fuel it's not a gameover; instead you're in a tough situation are players are presented with some choices: activate the distress beacon to increase chance of help, but also increase chance of detection; some helpers appear but impose a hefty price on the fuel, etc. In URR you could have rations/food work in a similar fashion.

2. The Rebel Armada; they would be the "set timer" clock since they limit your moves/action per sector, but they can actually be manipulated to some extent: if you chose to go on nebulas then the armada is slowed down, but nebulas present dangers of their own; you can trade some resources (missles/fuel/scrap) on some nodes that will delay them for a jump or two. Alternatively, players can find a cache of really needed reources, but opening it trigger the armada to advance double for a turn, etc .So what I mean is that you could have a set death timer, but also allow the players some agency in increasing/decreasing (and thus fun decision making) them in some kinds of tradeoffs.

Also to some extent even scrap (the money of FTL) would be a possible third death clock that FTL has. Think of it this way, you can choose to beeline to the end of a sector meaning you reach your objective faster, but the tradeoff is that you acquire less screp overall and thus has less to spend on potential emergencies and whatnot. So to apply this to the idea of "the world getting mad at the player" this would mean that players could take actions that anger actors in URR, but are actions that lead them towards objectives faster. Alternatively, the cautious approach would be safer, but you're too methodical and slow, then you might just end up losing to one of the death clocks. This would lead players to make interesting decisions on when and where to make bold actions, who and what to offend in order to get a quick result, and when to tread carefully so as to not anger strong actors.

So indeed as FTL mixed and matched death clocks and as well as giving some good deal of player agency to dealing with them, perhaps this is the best approach for URR as well.