I have everything I need to start AE, just waiting for that 128 iridium to finish up. I'm at 38 right now, but all other parts are made. The ME controller is easily the hardest thing i've ever made in minecraft. The requirements are insane, and until you really start attempting to make it you won't understand how insane. As I was making it, I had to go farm for stuff multiple times. I also had to make mob spawners for the galgadorian ingots. I had to make 8k RF/t (ish) worth of power to be able to keep scrap in the mass fab and keep making iridium 24/7. Which is way harder to do in expert mode. Even at full speed, it's very slow. Probably will have to leave the server on all of today while it finishes up.
Don't get me started on the machines required to do this either, it requires so many high end machines from so many mods. Each one takes an insane amount of complex materials to make, looking at you IC2/solar panel machines. I was probably crafting for a straight 6 hours before I had them all set up and every step of the way I was thinking "almost there... oh wait...". It just never ends.
Looking back on it, and knowing other things also require the same steps (AE power acceptor, AE chest, solar panels, etc)... I really don't know if I could force myself to make another one. It's far too complex to automate with AE I think, but boy that would be a sweet setup to see. They went a tad overboard here in my opinion.
Time in world: 122 hours. No messing around or making things look nice. It just took that long to get that far into the tech tree. After I get AE setup, going to start remodeling. I think my biggest complaints with expert so far is: Iridium and Plutonium. Forcing some on you is fine, requires you to get into IC2. Forcing the amount they do on you, well, it's a bit much. I still don't get how a big reactor is even remotely possible. Even the smallest one will require insane materials and time to make, while producing way less power than other things.
Also, is there anyway to get more than 2048EU/t to my machines? Creating both the Iridium and Sunnarium at the same time requires more than that, and you need lots, so the machines throttle even though there's power in the MSFU. Do you have to just make multiple MFSUs? The recipe is quite tedious.. not sure I want to do that.