Weirdly you and I are on differing sides of the spectrum here. (And I've seen you play some tech packs before so I know its not because you're super-casual, for the record)
Is there an early-game ore doubling method in FTB Continuum? Very disappointed to get the Tinkers Construct smeltery going and suddenly realize its one ingot per ore block. Actually, I think I was more angry than disappointed. I know I rage-quit at that point and shut the game down. But I did return later on.
I went in expecting this. I've seen this more and more in packs, and I actually appreciate it. Tinkers deprecates a ton of mods: I usually use the medieval-style mining Hammer as my example since its more powerful than mining drills from many mods, and it drives me nuts. Day-1 ore-doubling feels the same for me.
We're clearly going to have to work for our our-doubling this time. Bearing in mind that they're not "doubling" the ores we mine: things like pulverizers/macerators simply halved that number. We're back at vanilla now.
Seems like Continuum going to create its "expert mode" via grindy stuff? Such as having to mine twice as many ore blocks as usual? And such as having to wait 1/2 hour for the eFab multiblock to make certain key blocks for us? Oh excuse me, it's only 7.5 minutes with four Gearboxes. I'd better mention that part, or someone else surely will. LOL I think I've read that response to people's criticism of the modpack about 100 times already (on places like Reddit FTB).
I'm a gregtech player. Sooooo... I made four gearboxes off the hop, and I'll likely add more. As far as I know, there's only three ways to make a mod more "expert":
1) Add twitchy stuff (fighting mobs and stuff. Yawn in a tech pack)
2) Add mods we don't know (which is a self-defeating approach since then we'll know those mods for other packs, making those packs "less-expert")
3) Add grind, and solutions to remove or mitigate the grind (which seems to be the approach here so far)
I think the most disappointing thing about FTB Continuum so far, to me and my preferences and in my opinion, is that there's ZERO world content added. There's no dungeon mods to explore, there's nothing to roam the world and discover. What you see (when you spawn) is what you get. There's nothing more to find out there, except vanilla villages and ore blocks, and perhaps a random chest at mob spawner locations. Just build your base and never leave it, never go anywhere, because there's really no reason to, no motivation for it.
This is probably true. I'm totally in the minority here, and I'll own that, but I'm really, really glad I'm not forced to go on some silly adventure to get things. I just want to TECH.
Hopefully it starts getting more fun for you (or you find something else fun to do!)