Just my opinon but from experiance there always seems to be at least one 'thing', in each Alpha, that can be so rare & critical that if you don't find it by X, then your game is basically locked up.
What's worked for me is to add a personal rule or two. Like in A17 if I don't have 2 beakers by lvl 100 I fake buy them at trader, assuming there isn't a working chem station with a 2km radius of my base.
Set em up prior to starting a new game, make em tough, and it won't feel much like cheating, more like a rational measure to prevent stalling out a nice playthrough just because rn-jeebus doesn't like you.
It's also interesting (to me at least

) to recall that we couldn't always make wrenches, they were 'found' only. And you could not make a minibike until you found the dumbsh... book.
So it may be that in A18 Beakers will be craftable, who knows?
That's the way it is. Some are lucky, others not.
But to say "I was lucky so there is no problem" shows that the problem was not understood. Beakers are a rare item but at same time they are important for the game. I am of the opinion that there should always be the possibility that one can compensate missing luck with effort.
Well said RipClaw, especially the bit about compensating missing luck with effort.