OK, that's not what I want then. I want to guide progress like it does, but I don't want it to be so restrictive. I just want to create a suggested path, that's all.
I have an idea that you may like:
Instead of gating behind obnoxious recipes, gate behind resource scarcity.
In CoFH World, you can overwrite worldgen. Here's what you do:
Coal: Reduce cluster size to 5, increase cluster count to 30. You have 50% more coal clusters, but they are each two thirds less rich (from 17 to 5), giving an overall lower quantity of coal per chunk. Granted, this isn't the most critical, as charcoal is always going to be a thing, but it gets him starting to think about other resources to do business with since coal will be a less common resource than in vanilla. However, you actually increase the odds of him coming across at least *some* coal. But it also reduces the amount of coal he can get just by 'skimming'. You're going to need to have to move a lot of stone to get substantial quantities of coal. Which is the point.
Iron: Reduce cluster size to 4. Adjust Max Height to 50 and Min Height to 20. Here we again cut the quantity of ore per vein by two thirds, but instead of increasing the number of clusters, we adjust the height in which it can spawn, which is both a good thing and a bad thing, as far as the player is concerned. On the one hand, because there is a more narrow band in which the ore can spawn, the ore will 'feel' more common within that band. As with Coal, you are going to have to move more stone to get the same amount of iron ore, however you're going to find it more frequently in general. But that doesn't change the fact that there's only about a third the iron per chunk that there used to be. This will slow down his progression into mods, virtually every single one of which requires substantial quantities of iron to get going. Now for the dirty, sneaky part. Most players tend to branch-mine around Y12ish, high enough that they aren't going to dig into lava pools, but low enough to get diamonds. BUT iron will NEVER spawn on the same Y level as Diamonds, so if he digs too deep, he simply won't find any iron. He'll need to go up to find it. This means your Y12 branch mine will occasionally net you some gold, diamond, lapis, and redstone, but never iron. You will need multiple branch mines to get all the resources you will need.
Gold: Reduce cluster size to 4, increase cluster count to 10. This will halve ore per vein, but double the number of veins you can find, making it a wash. However, it gives the player *something* more often, which gives him the rewards needed to keep going, just like a little skinner box should.
Redstone: Reduce cluster size to 2, increase cluster count to 20. You quarter the amount of redstone per vein, and increase the number of veins by roughly a third, giving FAR less redstone in the world. This, along with the iron, keeps your friend always having to delve deeply into the mines in order to progress technologically. Even better, Redstone max is 16 and Iron minimum is 20 which means they will never spawn on the same Y level. Intentionally. However, you will encounter veins more frequently, giving out redstone in penny-packets. Since later machines can significantly increase the amount of redstone per ore processed, your limited supplies of redstone will 'feel' roughly the same as your higher level machines require more redstone as you increase your redstone output per ore processed. However, this is going to hamstring entry into most mods in general pretty severely, and requiring far more time in the mines than in front of a crafting grid. Either do not include ExUtil2 or if you do, disable Red orechid to prevent obviating this.
By doing this, you retard the technological progression due to lack of raw materials handy. However, he's going to have metric tons of cobble, and renewable resources are renewable, which means he can build out of wood and stone for his villagers, and keep everyone fed (manually) without too many problems. But it's going to feel really good to finally be able to get some things automated, because of how much work you put into getting those resources. Instead of having your face in a crafting grid or machine GUI 90% of the time, you're down in the mines 90% of the time. It still extends gameplay, but at least it is moderately more engaging.
