i know you're already typing "of course the cookie clicker guy would post that" but i really do have a fondness for exponential automation bootstrapping scenarios. one of my favorite old minecraft modpacks had stuff like solar panels and replicators. what you do is you painstakingly amass the components to create your first replicator (which involves rubber farms, ore quarries, processing lines, etc) and go to great lengths to power it through cranks you have to turn or coal you have to dig up. at some point you build your first solar panel. very slow energy output but it passively powers your replicator for free. what do you replicate? solar panels. you can then craft more efficient solar panels out of those solar panels. your energy output accelerates and so does your replication rate. eventually you're producing so much extra energy that you can justify plugging in a second replicator, and then a third, which you replicated for free. your replicators replicate replicators along with the solar panels that power them. for fun, you drop one diamond in the system and your entire chest network fills up almost immediately with thousands and thousands of diamonds. you will never run out of anything ever again. i don't think that modpack has replicators anymore