is the author Expecting the player to keep Feeding burner miner?

cant recommend the mod bc of weird ideas of fun like this one.

The mod description specifically say: "... rebalances almost all vanilla game content, making it harder.".
We didn't find unlocking the mining drill with autonomation pack very expensive.

But we will not ignore ur observation, in the next update i will add an option for disable chaging of early vanilla tecnology and I will remove steel requirment from electric mining drill. I hope u will like this compromise.