You know, after a rather healthy debate with Immibis in the chat room, I'm seriously tempted to write an addon for IC2. It will likely be the least popular addon in existence, but hey... it will help me work on my modding skills.
I think I'll call it "ThermalDustrial ExpansionCraft".
In brief, many of the problems I have with IC2 isn't necessarily with the power grid, as he demonstrated to me, but with how the machines work WITH that power grid. However, this would make significant changes to how IC2 works, and I doubt the API would permit me to make some of these changes, but here's what I'd do in an ideal world:
- Machines do not explode when fed incorrect voltages. Instead, they simply will not connect to a power cable with incorrect voltage (LV machines will not connect to gold cable unless they have a transformer upgrade, etc...).
- Machines will no longer 'stutter' on low energy. Instead, they will self-throttle and process slower, using less EU/t, and will not start processing until it has enough EU in its internal buffer to process the item currently inside it.
- Add in tabs into the machine GUI which will tell it how to handle redstone signal interaction, a display on how much EU/t it can handle at maximum capacity and how much it is currently pulling, and a sided configuration tab.
- Energy storage devices also get tabs indicating how they interact with redstone, maximum input or output, maximum output is per side, and configurable as to which side is input or output or simply does not do energy.
- Plate Former is removed, hammers and snips do not have durability
In effect, importing many of the things I find valuable about TE3 and importing them into an IC2 environment.
I'm sure no one would use it because anyone who enjoys IC2 would consider it 'horribly OP', and those who enjoy TE3 would just play TE3, but it would be a curious 'thought exercise' to play around with modding.