Snipped for brevity. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I think AE2 is complexity for the sake of complexity and I think that's always bad. Again, I don't think the mod is completely without merit, but I think it is a substantially worse mod than AE1. And yes, I have played with it a lot. It's perfectly okay for us to disagree about the awesomeness of a mod.
Don't get me wrong, I REALLY REALLY hate the channels and crap introduced into the new AE2. That and it's circumventable with P2P tunnels - intended or not, allowing 100s of channels run through one channel defeats the point of channels... Its just a complete pain in the backside from a mod that used to make complicated things simple, like storage. I'm saying the simple standard setup - the most useful bit, which is usually just disks + interface, still works the same way, and still works well. I'm not sure I'll ever bother with autocrafting anymore unless its a really really painful recipe, since I can't be bothered screwing around with the new system.
The core functionality is already there, yes. The basics. But the majority of non-core products are buggy, missing, or bad. And 1.7.10 is, in vanilla, buggy and performance poor for many people.
I must just be impervious to bugs or something then, because I haven't had problems with mods or performance on 1.7, the few bugs I noticed were either known or fixed by the time I checked (I just couldn't be bothered updating to fix them) or workarounds were simple. And it was only a few bugs, I can't even remember them they were insignificant enough.
I've no idea what makes me oblivious to performance issues either, I've a pretty good rig but java is usually oblivious to extra power after a certain (fairly low) point.
I did notice the world loads a bit slower - but that was after I added ATG, and was only an issue while exploring at high speed (flight), not something that happens a whole lot after base setup, and CL exploring is waking pace anyway.
Granted I haven't played with the new TE.
I'll defer to those with actual issues, be them bugs or performance, here.
With the ExU pipes, they are somewhat limited, but they're fine for the small stuff, by the time you need something really better, you can use SFM, or maybe someone will finally use conveyors as they were intended... lol...
SFM's not perfect, its a bit complicated so there is a gap where TE pipes used to be, but it's not gaping.
The energy pipes being machine blocked (QED i think) is the same issue as with enderIO, but atleast ExU is already in the pack, which helps reduce excess config changes Iskandar has to do.
I still think it's a good idea to at least start planning 1.7 now, the map would be a month away and everyone's starting to get into the swing of 1.7.10, I think lots of fixes and features aren't so far off.