"I also thought it’d be really useful for managing my water supply. It could take water from my rain dishes and place the water bottles in the pump."
The powered rain collectors will do that when it rains. They do not fill up when it is not raining, unlike the unpowered rain collectors. Personally I think that feature should be added to the powered collector or moved to a new Water Condenser that requires power but will automatically provide water to the base when it fills up.
"I expect the water management to behave like power management. I expect rain dishes to collect water (like nuclear reactors with energy) which gets stored automatically in pumps (like batteries)."
Powered rain collectors can be hooked up to your base using conduits. You need a water supply building to store water collected from them. When it rains they will pump water to your base. You can take water out of the water supply using the water spigot. The Greenhouse will automatically take water out of the water supply to water your plants.
"I know i know, I should watch my fuel. But pushing back a machine 200 tiles sucks, so being able to somehow carry energy to the car to refuel it would be really nice."
There is a work around. You can carry a garage, conduit, and a windmill or other power generator with you. Then you can make a refueling station. The problem is that takes up several inventory spaces. The batteries that store base power need power cells to make. It would be nice if we could use power cells to recharge stuff or make a reusable portable battery. Then we could get powered back up and have more inventory spaces for other stuff.
"For example I want to have lights that turn on/off using the daylight sensor."
I agree with this. The daylight sensor has a use but it would be better if the lights had it sensor built in. The sensor we have now makes the light stop receiving power instead of being turned off. This makes the power warning flash. And it requires a tile to be placed on so the lights can not be right next to the base, conduits, etc.
"As it is, the autocrafter is basically useless except for managing my farm (which it can’t do since I’m constantly refilling water manually anyway)."
The autocrafter should make the required parts / materials if you assign it to build something. It should have better automation options too. Assigning input and output only storage containers would be useful. Perhaps in the container window there could be a way to designate it. Or the autocrafter could be told to only take or output to containers of a color. For some stuff it is useful to maintain a number if items stored, like smelting ore into metal. Other stuff, like windmills I do not need to maintain a number in storage. An option when making a task to choose between maintaining a supply or just making a certain number would be useful.
"The drill machine is so slow and so hard to turn that I’d rather just take some air canisters and the buggy to collect rocks and ore."
I don't see a problem with it's turning. It has a pretty tight turn. The dozer is just too slow. And using the drill is too awkward. Space should turn it on or off, or make it turn on / off automatically. The drill uses a lot of energy too. The buggy could use better turning. I find it to be kinda awkward to drive.