I do think the "game mechanics" thing ought to be in people's minds.
If they had built in a mechanic that an object/ship would behave differently based on the contents of our cargo hold, we'd have seen it used for other things.
If they had designed one specific type of rare goods as a "translator", we'd have seen that too.
Stations behaving differently because of things dropped outside? Missions triggering or becoming available because things were sold? Game-wide events changing because something "expired" in space?
The only thing we know that the UA does in itself is morse out the name of the nearby "thing". I'm pretty convinced that in one instance (and probably lore-based) it's going to use a name different to the name we know - especially as it's a) easy from a coding point of view and b) doesn't involve complex game mechanics that we simply haven't seen the game "do" ...
Kerrash is right with the aquarium...
Except there 400 billion stars to choose from, even if it just human space that thousands of systems to try. If this is the case their need to be a way for us to indentify which system to try. Other wise we could be here all year.