I'm not sure if minefactory has really been tested on a large scale, I know it has been around for a LONG time now but has not seem to pick up in popularity. I'm assuming this is due to the fact that it does not offer anything unique besides conveyor belts, which only seems like a laggy alternative to the other 3 methods of item transport that already exist.
I have used nether ores before, and while I didn't really learn too much about it during the time I used it, what I did learn about it is that the nodes that the ores spawn in aren't really any larger then the nodes that you might find in the overworld, and diamond didn't seem overly abundant, however I could be wrong about that. The only difference may be that the placement of the ores in the nether will not match the overworld placement for obvious reasons.
As for soul shards, I have expressed my opinion about the mod before. I honestly think this mod should not be included in any modpack by default. While it might not be a server killer (unless the user of the soul shard is completely incompetent, which some have been on the past on TahgCraft) it does make farming of resources and the building of effective mob traps FAR too easy. The building of effective vanilla style mob grinders is something I take pride in and had a lot of fun doing, and soul shards crushes all of that for me. There are things I do like about soul shards, such as the ability to get a cat, dog, or bat spawner (I'm not sure if it works on modded passive mobs like the penguin but that would be really cool) which you can do really neat things with if you have a creative mind. Sadly though, 99% of the time it is only used to ease the building of the trap and the gathering of the resources. On top of all of that, it seems to me that people will prefer to make a cow or chicken soul shard, instead of using the mods at our disposal to create an effective traditional animal farm. Also, as nanakisan stated, with mods such as gravity gun at our disposal, you can easily create a super effective mob grinder which will follow vanilla mechanics without the use of soul shards. Anthaeus's statement about vanilla mob grinders being somehow more laggy then then soul shards has me a little perplexed. Vanilla spawners will only trigger if your within 16 blocks of the spawner where as soul shards can repeatedly spit out mobs even if the player is not even close enough to keep them alive. They will just constantly spawn and despawn, adding unnecessary processes to the system You can just as easily build in a fail safe to any vanilla spawner just as you can with soul shard spawners. It comes down to the designer of it to be competent enough to do so. A very quick example would be have a button or pressure plate trigger a state cell which will last for 5 minutes allowing you to afk in that alotted time without worry of the system overflowing, after the 5 minutes has expired it will trigger lights to turn on thus disabling the system until the next button press. There are many different ways to achieve a fail safe. Of course with things like iron golems and computercraft turtles making exp farms insanely easy to design, you don't have to worry about that as much, but that is a another topic entirely...
Have not much to say besides applied energistics besides the fact that I hope its not buggy, laggy, or unbalanced, which does not seem very likely to me considering how new it is.
EDIT: I don't know much about the new EE3 but it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the last, however things like idle EMC generation such as the condensors and collectors from EE2 should be banned if the exist.
Speaking of mystcraft, I honestly hope that this new server will not go down the path the current one has with the whole bright desert. Any symbol that alters world generation to spawn more resources or otherwise resources that are not meant to be in the overworld should be banned. I understand that the instability effects such as decay are supposed to counter balance this, but decay tends to cause lag and the rest of them aren't enough of a counterbalance to justify something such as dense ores. Even with the decay mystcraft is not balanced. Don't get me wrong, mystcraft is a great mod and I love it as it can create some very interesting landscapes, but it should be used with great caution.
Onto EXBL... This is a mod I love, and while I understand what can be annoying about it, I simply cannot go back to to the plain boring vanilla biomes after having used it for almost a year now. Cons of it are it can create some very large unappealing seemingly endless biomes which tend to make finding some of the vanilla biomes a little more challenging, but the pros are so much more then that. It adds a great amount of diversity to world generation which has not been altered for the longest time. It can create terrain that exceed the traditional y128 limit, it can spawn villages in some very unique places, and it generally just makes exploring so much better, and exploration in mindcraft is lackluster enough as it is. Biomes that are a must have to me are: autum woods, extreme jungle (for the +y128), green hills, meadow, mountain ridge, redwood forest. Biomes that would be neat to have but I could do without: alpine forest, glacier, rainforest or temperate rainforest (I forget which one :/ ), mountain desert, savanna or shurbland. Biomes that are garbage: ice wasteland, marsh. The rest I don't care too much for or just have not seen them yet if they are any good.
(Part 2 below)
I have used nether ores before, and while I didn't really learn too much about it during the time I used it, what I did learn about it is that the nodes that the ores spawn in aren't really any larger then the nodes that you might find in the overworld, and diamond didn't seem overly abundant, however I could be wrong about that. The only difference may be that the placement of the ores in the nether will not match the overworld placement for obvious reasons.
As for soul shards, I have expressed my opinion about the mod before. I honestly think this mod should not be included in any modpack by default. While it might not be a server killer (unless the user of the soul shard is completely incompetent, which some have been on the past on TahgCraft) it does make farming of resources and the building of effective mob traps FAR too easy. The building of effective vanilla style mob grinders is something I take pride in and had a lot of fun doing, and soul shards crushes all of that for me. There are things I do like about soul shards, such as the ability to get a cat, dog, or bat spawner (I'm not sure if it works on modded passive mobs like the penguin but that would be really cool) which you can do really neat things with if you have a creative mind. Sadly though, 99% of the time it is only used to ease the building of the trap and the gathering of the resources. On top of all of that, it seems to me that people will prefer to make a cow or chicken soul shard, instead of using the mods at our disposal to create an effective traditional animal farm. Also, as nanakisan stated, with mods such as gravity gun at our disposal, you can easily create a super effective mob grinder which will follow vanilla mechanics without the use of soul shards. Anthaeus's statement about vanilla mob grinders being somehow more laggy then then soul shards has me a little perplexed. Vanilla spawners will only trigger if your within 16 blocks of the spawner where as soul shards can repeatedly spit out mobs even if the player is not even close enough to keep them alive. They will just constantly spawn and despawn, adding unnecessary processes to the system You can just as easily build in a fail safe to any vanilla spawner just as you can with soul shard spawners. It comes down to the designer of it to be competent enough to do so. A very quick example would be have a button or pressure plate trigger a state cell which will last for 5 minutes allowing you to afk in that alotted time without worry of the system overflowing, after the 5 minutes has expired it will trigger lights to turn on thus disabling the system until the next button press. There are many different ways to achieve a fail safe. Of course with things like iron golems and computercraft turtles making exp farms insanely easy to design, you don't have to worry about that as much, but that is a another topic entirely...
Have not much to say besides applied energistics besides the fact that I hope its not buggy, laggy, or unbalanced, which does not seem very likely to me considering how new it is.
EDIT: I don't know much about the new EE3 but it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the last, however things like idle EMC generation such as the condensors and collectors from EE2 should be banned if the exist.
Speaking of mystcraft, I honestly hope that this new server will not go down the path the current one has with the whole bright desert. Any symbol that alters world generation to spawn more resources or otherwise resources that are not meant to be in the overworld should be banned. I understand that the instability effects such as decay are supposed to counter balance this, but decay tends to cause lag and the rest of them aren't enough of a counterbalance to justify something such as dense ores. Even with the decay mystcraft is not balanced. Don't get me wrong, mystcraft is a great mod and I love it as it can create some very interesting landscapes, but it should be used with great caution.
Onto EXBL... This is a mod I love, and while I understand what can be annoying about it, I simply cannot go back to to the plain boring vanilla biomes after having used it for almost a year now. Cons of it are it can create some very large unappealing seemingly endless biomes which tend to make finding some of the vanilla biomes a little more challenging, but the pros are so much more then that. It adds a great amount of diversity to world generation which has not been altered for the longest time. It can create terrain that exceed the traditional y128 limit, it can spawn villages in some very unique places, and it generally just makes exploring so much better, and exploration in mindcraft is lackluster enough as it is. Biomes that are a must have to me are: autum woods, extreme jungle (for the +y128), green hills, meadow, mountain ridge, redwood forest. Biomes that would be neat to have but I could do without: alpine forest, glacier, rainforest or temperate rainforest (I forget which one :/ ), mountain desert, savanna or shurbland. Biomes that are garbage: ice wasteland, marsh. The rest I don't care too much for or just have not seen them yet if they are any good.
(Part 2 below)
