I am pretty sure its also not my fault if they dont use funky locomotion/pneumaticraft/Flaxbeard ?
Those mods are some what before going the steve carts route....Minecraft is all about creativity and innovation, the quest book is there just a guide.....
Do you seriously want me to make a video on how to make a early game tree farm and ruin all the fun? >_>?
1- Unless I'm missing something I really don't see how you can make an auto-farm using only Flaxbeard. If you meant by using the 3 mod you mentionned combined then I consider it to be later than using stevecart. I really doubt any of your players have automated a tree farm using pneumatic craft in a time frame close to what it take to do it with steve cart.
2- The early tree farm was just an example like I said. I really like the idea of tiered tech but I think you might be overdoing it a bit too much. It really feels like ,at a given time , the amount of choices you have in what to do next is extremly limited.
If you really want to know what I mean : start a new game and put an alarm to ring every 15-20 minutes. Every times alarm rings pause the game and write down what machines/tech you could do right now with the ressource you have. You'll see that the amount of choices is quite limited.
3- Just wanna say that other than that I really think your modpack is really nice. The atmosphere feels really nice. The mob difficulty make exploring really tense and makes you feels quite good when a dungeon raiding expedition goes well. The water/insanity bars add a nice touch without beeing too obnoxious.