GTEU is... seems complicated. There is a steam stage available, which uses... mind breaking amounts of bronze. Ask Shneekey, it's his favorite stage of GT.
Actually, Omnifactory skips the bronze steam age from GTCE entirely, you go straight into LV from hand tools.
Late to the party, but I'm playing OmniFactory, which is my first introduction to GregTech.
I know that OF has made things "easier" but boy do I keep groaning at the recipe requirements & steps, and the sheer amount of resources to build anything.
I'm at MV stage, AE has been unlocked (and consists in my world of a storage drive, an interface, and a connection to drawers). I'm constantly found that I'm struggling with power, it's better now that I've got an array of magmatic dynamo's all upgraded to 2nd Tier (so 150 RF/t) each but I found that this was really my biggest gripe with OF. Those are the only power options, and they are pretty darn expensive to build, and to upgrade, along with the questbook not covering any other power option for a long time. With no knowledge of GTCE, I'm relying on the questbook.
There's three ways you can scale your energy to multi-thousand RF/t pretty easily.
1) Steam Dynamos, get three of them. One with a Boiler augment, two with Steam Turbine augment. Steam Turbine on Steam Dynamos quadruple(!) the energy output of that particular dynamo, so for a completely un-upgraded dynamo, it goes from 40 RF/t to 160 RF/t. And one with a boiler augment can sustain two of them, so that's 360 RF/t, with a fairly trivial investment. Now upgrade the dynamos, and stack them up!
2) Magmatic Dynamo with the augment that makes it require coolant. Hook up to water source of choice, and it increases RF output significantly. Once Gelled Cyotheum goes online and on farm (which won't be until HV tech), it provides an even bigger boost to RF/t production.
3) Nuismatic Dynamo. No, really, hear me out here. They normally run on coins, but there's an upgrade that lets them run on gems, that also dramatically increases RF/t. Now, boot up Deep Mob Learning, and hook it up with a Shulker card (you'll have to start off with something like a Zombie card, then make some netherrack, make probably a blaze card to get some nether essence, then make the outworldian essence using that). Pristine Shulker Essence provides diamonds. Stupid amounts of RF/t. You'll need to set up the Polymer Clay for auto-production. To do that, you'll want basically a Cobbleworks (Cobble -> Gravel -> Sand), then smelt the sand into glass, then electrolize the glass into nether quartz. Sand also gets turned into Dust, which combines in a Chemical Reactor with water to make Clay. You can use a Liquid Extractor to turn Ender Pearls into the liquid form. In a MV (has to be at least MV) Chemical Reactor, 250 mb of resonant ender (1 ender pearl's worth) + 1 Nether Quartz = Resonant Clathrate. Smelt into Pulsating Dust. Pulsating Dust + Clay in an Alloy Smelter = Polymer Clay you need to run the shulker card.
Since you already have Magmatic Dynamos, you'll probably want to upgrade them with the coolant augment to substantially increase their power output as an interim step to getting the Nusimatic Dynamos up and running.
While the work tables make things easier to craft, the LV tier still has too many steps to craft things (looking at you LV pumps), and the assemblers are way to expensive to craft. Personally I also dislike the durability tools to make wires, plates, etc. Most of the time (in most other packs), it's cheaper to manually hammer plates then build a machine and get that making them. That's one of the things I always disable in packs I make, anything that has plates also has recipes using ingots (just more of them). Those tools could easily have been removed from OF with no noticeable effect apart from one less headache for players early on.
The expense of things is something I find is hampering, especially early on. In my mind I have plans of what I want to build, but the resource cost stops you. I've got rooms planned out with what I want to build, but they are all empty of machinery.
But, despite the resource cost, I now have a MV ore processing system in place using large arrays of drawers to filter materials to the correct machines with EnderIO cables, along with ExU crafters converting tiny dust to full dusts (cheaper than using packing machines - seriously expensive and a recipe that needs adjusting IMO) so I've got a lot of new materials that I don't have a clue what they are for yet, but at least they are there when I need them.
I think the approach of using the low tier circuits in many recipes is a good way to ensure basic resources are constantly required, along with more efficient circuit recipes as you progress in your tech infrastructure.
Hoooo boy, you are falling into a VERY common trap. Some things:
LV motors are easy. You want a Magnetizer to make the magnetic rods without spending 4x redstone per. You also want a lathe to cut your rod resource cost in half. From there, in an Assembler, 2x Iron Rods + 1x Magnetic Iron Rod + 2x Molten Copper (feed from adjacent Liquid Extractor) = 1 motor. Done.
Once you have done that, the pump is a Motor, some tin cable, a tin rotor (check out the Assembly recipe... Soldering Alloy is 9x Tin and 1x Antimony, which you get from Stibnite that you'll be picking up as you mine out Tetrahedrite), and a Bronze Pipe. Also, check the Assembler recipe for Pumps as well... you'll be surprised how much easier it is!
You want a set of LV machines that help you with resource economy. For example, the Wiremill. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH how awesome the Wiremill is! First off, instead of being a 2 ingots per plate and one plate per wire recipe, it is one ingot makes two wires, so a 4x1 ratio.
But wait, there's more! Run that copper wire through the Wiremill again and get Fine Copper Wire which is a plug-and-play replacement for Copper Wire in all of your circuitry needs, which is a 16x(!) efficiency multiplier.
Also, you want to get away from the first circuits as soon as possible. You'll want the multiblock coking oven, which needs steam (use a GT machine to produce steam) and a Programmed Circuit, then feed it Coal and get Coke as well as Phenol. Your basic boards + Phenol in a Chemical Reactor = Phenolic Substrate which is what you need for your Second Tier One Circuits, which are WAY more efficient!
Since you're in MV, once you get Ethanol production set up, you can start making Ethylene and Polyethylene as well as Vinyl and Polyvinyl Chloride for the better recipes.
You're ALWAYS wanting to look at your circuits for a way to make them easier or cheaper. Always.
Ore Processing is almost obsolete in this pack. There's several ways to obtain copious quantities of ores without needing to worry too much about processing. Since you've got it, then you may as well use it, the secondary outputs can be useful down the line.
