First off, if you got to the point where you could create fuel faster than you were using it, but still didn’t have a tier two grabber, it means you kind of missed the main mechanic. This is partially because the game isn’t fully balanced.
As for progression being in massive jumps, our mistake was squaring the prices as if you were building 9 tiles when you build a 3x3.
Thank you for playing and leaving feedback! We will push an update after the voting period.