Ok, more thoughts. I tried pneumaticraft (PC) in unstable and all I wanted to play with was drones so I breezed over alot of stuff at the time including NEI'ing items in. Since AE2 doesn't have MAC, I didn't really think about auto creation of stf in PC but yeah, that is a bit of an issue with the chamber. Since it'll pull items out regardless and you have to filter them, you can create a filter I guess but it'd be clumbersome. So, yes, it's doable in theory and you'd have to make one set of things and create a filter for it, up to 9 items and you could put an ME interface on that end (in this game I don't even have AE yet so I'm thinking forward). As I wrote this I realized, yeah... alot like the liquid transposer for doing fluiducts, redstone cells, etc.... you have to create one of each to create pattern anyways. dur. OK, I'll leave this paragraph in but I sorta invalidated it just now.
But, as I delved into this area so I could do a simple mob trap with grinder and get some energy flowing, I'm using up a bunch of resources towards this goal but also learning something. While doing this, I've heat stroked twice cause I'm trying to think about how to do the steps, I've run out of food and had to run back to get stf, I stupidly jumped into etching acid and did a forest gump moment trying to jump out of a 1x1 pit... it really makes me ponder this.
I've created another still suit so I can swap out in the field. I've made a knapsack so I can carry food. You have the enemy at the gates which you can 100% contain. You can ALLEVIATE the heatstroke/hydration by doubling up on suits, you can ALLEVIATE the food issue by knapsack. But it doesn't really give you time to get comfortable learning a new thing. I know from playing with PC before that the pumps will blow up dramatically if you don't add security upgrade and don't get me started on the redstone/gauge thing. I could NEVER get that to work tho I'm sure it's quite possible. my brain is not very porous.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that overall, the inclusion of SOL (and slightly so envrionmine) are fully acceptable given that you understand what you're doing. I guess what I might do is load up unstable w/latest PC and play with it more outside the need to worry about all this stuff and get comfortable there since here I'll end up forgoing my farming, eat all my food and just open the gates and let the heathens take me to nirvana.
This is not a pack to learn new things. It does allow you to use existing known things in different ways, but learning a whole new strategy with the sickle of god hanging over your head causes too much interruption (for me at least). Not the fault of the pack, just my opinion/observation.
btw, the guy that did PC really put his heart and soul into that mod. I had alot of fun playing with the drones and the programming, etc... It was too bad they were all named hodor and kept on colliding with the thing they built, getting stuck in the thing they built, running into and dying by colliding with a wall in their path (or floor for that matter), or just dying for whatever reason... This was many versions ago (unstable hasn't updated for a while I think). But the mod itself was pretty awesome. Watching the drones go after zombies with the hud on was funny as hell. The door might be a good way into the base since it'll sense your presence and open/close automatically. Elevator not so usefull here since the other elevator block is one of the first blocks I try to make when you can't fly anywhere. good for trees, smeltery, etc... My entrance to my base now is a glass platform 20 blocks up in air with elevators on both sides, one in base, one out. I elevator up, walk across, elevator down. when zombies learn how to use elevator, I'm screwed.