Sometimes you are lucky and need not that much Exploration. Usually you are looking for bees, gas, oil wells, spawners and sometimes for an ocean biome. Imho the main problem with exploration mods is, that you either can loot items that abuse the progress mechanics or you do not find anything worth it.
Off topic, kinda. I thought of a modpack that would force exploration. It would have all ores disabled like regrowth. Yet have added mods for dungeons and such. And stuff like ars magica and thaumcraft to help with exploring. possibly tardis to make it easy to get back to base.
Not really sure on the entire make up. Just mostly it would make mobs tougher. All the good loot is in areas where those mobs are. And a deconstruction table or similar to get the basic materials from the loot. There would be no way to auto gen the ores. Not without something like a bore that skims dungeons. No magic crops, no MFR laser drill, etc.
I don't really have the drive to finish configuring it though. Rather hope someone else does it. Does sound good though.
***
Heard 1.0.0 is on the way. I just started a new world and enjoying the pack again. I have played this pack a few times over the years. Never progress to the stuff I hear happens later in the game ?dreamworld?. It is one of my favorite packs though. I tend to like the start game a lot more then the end game. Only game I liked the end game better was Diablo 2. Then they released a patch.