Is anyone able to explain what "difficulty" would mean in the context of tech mods? What would make something harder than something else? Does anyone have any good examples? When answering this question, try also to explain why you picked the mods you picked.
Well, not just all tech mods but difficulty can be boiled down to:
Resource acquisition - Is the resource rare (Diamonds), or does it have some form of protection (Wither)? A rare/defended resource takes longer to acquire which can be equated as difficult. But it it takes too long, then you approach Tedium.
Crafting - Does the item require a short or a long crafting process. A long crafting process is not always good, especially if it's forcing the player to stand at a crafting table and run back and forth frequently for materials. While not difficult, it's perceived as difficult when in fact it's just tedium. Some examples would be the carts from Steves Cart and the Digital Miner from Mekanism. The Steves Cart crafting gets quite boring with pointless steps, meanwhile the Digital Miner also has a lot of different steps for crafting, but involves various different machines (built one the other night, enjoyed building everything needed to craft this item).
Use of placed block - Can the block be figured out from supplied GUI, or do you need to consult an external guide?
Sense of Reward - If something is "difficult" but doesn't give the player a sense of achievement/reward, then the item in question needs to be reviewed. Either the resources, crafting or usage of the item need to be reviewed.
In all cases, they are affected by time. If things take too long, Difficulty moves to Tedium, once at Tedium stage, that's when people stop liking the mod they are using.
That's why I'm not keen on TC4 research, it's basically making me spend longer time at a "crafting table" just to unlock the item to be crafted, and it's already made things longer by running around scanning for aspects.
It's all a subjective thing and isn't really about difficulty, but tedium. When people get bored, they also can get angry. Hence topics such as this and many others.
Hence why the extra crafting steps in IC2 are seen as "stupid". Personally those extras should have been a Tier 2 item. First you can craft a machine in a vanilla minecraft way. It works, but isn't really efficient (perhaps it has no upgrade slots, limited inventory, etc), if you want to improve it, then you'll need your wire cutters, etc. So you can start using the mod for the basics, then take the plunge into more involved crafting chains if you want to advance in that mod. Naturally the Tier 1 item can be upgraded to the next tier, or you can craft the tier 2 item directly.
I'm still waiting for IC2 to add some crazy industrial machine system that auto-taps rubber trees for their sap. Shouldn't have to rely on other mods for auto-gathering that much needed resource. I remember one of the first things I tried doing with IC2 and RP2 back in 1.2.5 was seeing if there was any auto-tapping system I could build. All failed, but it was a fun project.
Edit: Hmm, seems I like to use the word Hence a bit too much
