I'll admit the ender io farm does have a bit of magic associated with it, much like the harvesters in mfr when you really think about it. Now I've complained a bit myself about the seeming low tech of a space age mod, but when you think about it, pneumaticcraft and steves carts actually make a lot of sense since both rely on some form of robot to complete the task, they just require a little actual effort and you have to study up on the mods a bit, instead of just place and forget.
Now i don't think the ender io farmer is OP. It requires tool replacement. it requires an alternate power source (steve's can power themselves. And in this pack the upgrades are quite expensive, if you really want to nerf the farmer just make the quad and oct capacitors a little tougher to reach, once you aren't concerned with the recipes for the single capacitors the upper tiers are easy. Even without the Bedrockium, nobody is getting a farmer until they've solved galgador enough to get several other Ender IO blocks anyway. The material cost derived from the Ender IO Machine block is more than sufficient. If people want to grind stuff by hand that Steve's can automate until Ender IO, then that is their choice to make.
I'll admit that Steve's Factory Manager is about the most OP thing you can find, because it is one of the most well thought out automation managers. It does still require a programming learning curve, and really doesn't do anything you can't do with Pneumaticcraft. But given the so called "early game" automation capabilities of this pack i do think that the SFM blocks are so difficult in the level and amount of materials required, that people will only make the bits required for the quests and use them if they can. As much as i do like the new galgador approach, you still look at those recipes and die a little inside. By the time i can make that stuff, i will already have used other mods for all my needs, why is it even in the pack?
I feel that most of us would just rather you disable those blocks. There is a different type of disappointment when you see a block you really like that is disabled, or a mod that is not in the pack, versus a recipe that says "you will hate this even in the late game" Frankly i'd rather SFM wasn't even in the pack, so i wouldn't constantly be looking at it in NEI.
Why is logistics pipes in the pack? maybe a quest line so people who don't know much about it can get some simple systems set up?
I do think the involved quest lines need some rearranging. we need better quest rewards, and i can't tell you how many times I've ground myself to dust getting something only to find that further down the (highly intimidating) quest line i get that thing as a reward. Also as you can tell by reading this thread there are a lot of special tweaks that Karma has added (like the line to the smeltery) that don't get the explanations they need. The fact is that there are some simple things that can be easily solved with a sign in the starting area, or some explanation in the quest book (most of us dummies will eventually go in a read it even if we didn't the first time).
I do believe that Karma needs to take a break on the ADD ALL THE NEW THINGS! trip that has been occurring lately. Every patch and update there are new mods (often broken mods). What we need for a while is some refinement. Go back over the whole quest line looking at the customer experience and make sure that when people are expected to build a device, they have everything they need for that device. Give them some rewards that will actually help out or have meaning. Give us some rewards that are worth getting, particularly those at the end of long chains, I currently think that there isn't a single reward in the Flaxbeard line that makes it worth even attempting, and the rewards at the end of steve's carts is a joke. Make sure that everything that is in the pack is stable and the difficulty level is appropriate (survivable).
For instance, infernal mobs. I'm not worried about how often they spawn, it's the fact that every infernal mob I've encountered has 6 or more modifiers. On several occasions I've encountered mobs that are impossible to battle, 500hp+regen+poison+blindness mobs that apply those debuffs even to attacks at range? There are not items in this game that will get you through that battle. At one point i had a mob like that, a teleporting spider, that got stuck in my wall, and it was healing as fast as it was suffocating. The teleport+blind+regen was the problem, because by the time you got your sight back, and figured out where he'd gone, he'd healed every bit of damage he'd taken. (and my bow was doing upwards of 30 points of damage). the roguelikes are designed to be challenging even with vanilla mobs, and they would be. Adding a bunch of harder mobs without giving easy routes to comparable armor and weapons doesn't help (those mods that make the mobs tough are intended to combat those mods with the better gear) Infernal mobs can tax some of the most OP armors like blood magic. Even Karma digs through the wall rather than actually going inside because he knows it's suicide.
I still like this pack, I think Karma does a good job, but i think the focus for a while needs to be different. A lot of people started playing this pack, like me, because the Yog-tards started a lets play of it, and i don't think Karma was ready for that. As it stands the state of this pack will drive off more people than it attracts.
