OK so i've checked and BC definitely isn't in this version of the mod
Looks like i'll go with the RFTools Builder with a quarry card setup. My question is, in BC we could have transport pipes and automatic sorting into chests, can we have a similar setup with the Builder?
Oh, we can do SOOOooo much better.
First off, Thermal Dynamic Ducts are everything Buildcraft Pipes wished they were, and then some. In fact, TD Ducts have some basic logic to them already, think of them more like RP2 Tubes, Nearest Inventory First logic by default. Then you have Servos, which you attach (like a Gate) to an inventory or machine which is outputting to the duct, which can auto-pull from the inventory (pulsating gate), with higher tier servos being able to handle higher number of items at a time as well as sending each bundle faster. You have Filters on destination inventories that can either be whitelist or blacklist. So basically 'I only want these things in here', or 'these things don't go in here, but anything else can'.
Then there are retrievers, which are awesome. First off, retrievers will attempt to pull from any inventories connected to the duct network that it is attached to, and put those items into the inventory the retriever is attached to. So, say you have five or six places that are generating cobble. You can have a barrel with a Retriever saying 'I want all cobble to be actively pulled here', and it will do so. But it gets even better than that. Signalum or Enderium Retrievers ALSO have the potential for Supply Logistic Pipe functionality, saying "I want x number of item y in this inventory at all times'. So, other than auto-crafting, you have around 95% of the functionality that RP2 tubes and Logistic Pipes had.
And that's not even the most powerful option available to you. Oh no, let me introduce you to a mod which took the gap left when Logistic Pipes was having difficulties porting to 1.6 era. It is a mod called Applied Energistics 2. While the mod itself is fairly complicated, let me break down how powerful this mod can be. At its base, it can resemble a piping system, via Cable. You have Import Buses which pull things into the network, Export Buses which push things out of the network, and Storage Buses which can 'see' the attached inventory. Transportation is *instantaneous*.
But that's only the surface. You see, there are also Disk Drives you can create, which can store disks that can store items, much like chests. Different sized disks can store different quantities of stuff, although there's a cap of 63 different items you can put in any given disk, so you see diminishing returns unless you just want to store millions of cobble on disk. You can have up to ten disks in a disk drive, and you can have multiple disk drives per network which basically means each disk drive is pretty much a whole storage room unto itself.
A grid is how you access items stored within the network. There's the basic storage grid, which lets you pull from and add to the storage, and there's the crafting grid, which also gives you a 3x3 crafting grid that can pull directly from your network's resources. So if you want to, say, craft a stack of redstone torches, and you have a stack of redstone and a stack of sticks in your network somewhere, you can just ask it to do so, and it will.
But wait! There's more! I didn't even begin talking about the auto-crafting mechanic! You can create patterns that can store a recipe. Then you can put them in an Interface with adjacent crafters, and then that item will be available to request from the system, similar in concept to Logistics Pipes Crafting Pipes logic, only each interface can have up to eight or nine recipes each. And it intelligently does recursive crafting. So if you had all the appropriate patterns in your network, and asked for a crafting table, it could do that even if you only had logs in your storage, as long as it knew how to turn logs into planks then planks into crafting table. It handles sub-combines like a champ.
There are some limiting factors to this mod, however. The first one being Channels. You can have up to eight channels in an 'ad hoc' network, so you could have a couple of import buses, a couple of export buses, a storage bus, and a disk drive on the same network no problem. Get over eight channels, however, everything shuts down. That's when you need a Controller. A controller can provide up to 32 channels per face, but you'll need Dense Cable to carry that many, normal cable can only carry eight. And a Controller... can be a multiblock, with each face of the multiblock providing 32 channels. It is a bit complicated to get, but once you do... the sky's the limit.
And there's an even easier way to do it. It is called Refined Storage. Basically, in the 1.10.2 era, AE2 had difficulty updating. The original author had other things he needed to do, and didn't really feel like continuing the project. With this up in the air, someone went and made another mod called Refined Storage, intended as the replacement mod. As it turned out, the original author of AE2 passed the torch to some very nice people who did go ahead and continue releasing AE2, but RS was different enough that it has persisted.
RS is like AE2 without the channels, without needing to hunt down meteorites, and without needing to worry about the fiddle-faddle. You need a controller block, but there is no channel system. It's seen as a more simplistic version of AE2, designed to be more user and newbie friendly. Similar concepts, different ways of going about doing it.
