I've been going back and forth on that but yes, that might be a possibility!
maybe you could have an option in the beggining for play more active or more passive... it's a way to satisfy players with different tastes... normally we have difficulty settings that do that... if the player choose more passive you can make the automation upgrade to appear earlier in the tree... maybe with a variable/switch this can be possible... you make 2 automation upgrades, each one will have a condition linked to the option choose... :)