I certainly am far from blameless, but apology accepted.
That is so perfectly aimed at all my NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE buttons that I swear it was tailor made to include every mod I don't like.
I will never understand the desire of PvP players to integrate with the PvE so that it ruins both of them. Because it's nearly impossible to integrate them. Look at every game that has "world PvP" and watch as it's one of:
PvP with token PvE (Shooters go here most of the time)
PvE with token PvP (Minecraft sits here)
An ever-shifting unbalanced misery-inducing mess. (Hello EQ descendants like WoW)
If you want to suggest another converter engine, this is something I am definitely willing to listen to, though a few things like magic power are likely incompatible thematically (how does one make an aspect-powered engine, if RC considers aspects as not existing?). However, your wording makes me think that you are really asking for some third-party converter to make shaft power without the need for RC hardware.
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It will also see RC lose its identity. If you can just make shaft power from some other system, and you lose the need for the gearboxes, the power matching, and the rest of the powertrain design - which you will, because otherwise the alternative is setting up RC-based tiering again - RC will become over time just another "hook up the conduits" mod.
Put any one-setting converters at t5 Mod Power Converter Upgrade requirements. Which I can't remember off-hand. If RF can't make your mod into a "connect all the conduits" mod, then I highly doubt any other power system will manage that
Dual-direction power conversion is actually one of the single handiest cross-mod integration steps ever, and very useful for crafting a homogenous-seeming pack. Why do you think Power Converters was so popular back before RF? Maintaining 5 different power nets was a chore nobody wanted.
Just check the FluxField thing from Botania, it takes a frankly absurd amount of mana per RF. But if you've got a zillion mana pools, you can power some basic tech machines.
Take a similar stance with from-shaft converters. Have a Jet Engine of power produce something below 10 mana per tick (mana pools have a... 10-million capacity?) The point is to let your RoC progress be useful in some way to Botania progress, and maybe visa-versa.
Oh hey speaking of cross-mod... have you considered making the furnace heater work on the alchemical furnace?