Water? The CA supports liquid in recipes, not a requirement unless the recipe calls for it and it only requires power for each crafting process. In 1.5, it is like 2 mj per process?
Not sure how much rf per process in 1.6 though.
Oops. I know of the cyclic assembler and that it requires water and power. However, I have yet to actually use it. So my comment was kinda 1/2 pulled out of my backside in that regard.
As far as not using AE to perform this level of autocrafting...what I'm attempting to do this build, is get my stuff setup so I don't need to rely on AE as much as in previous Unleashed builds. I've managed to replace most of my farm management/collection and get a basic sorting system up that can provide basic exporting [limited to hopper output speed], all without using AE. I needed the seeds, or thought I did, to get a more efficient BioFuel production going to steam-power what will be my AE network and some ore-processing/asst crafting requiring MJ power [turns out 1 squid, with enough BioReactors, will work]. I've used AE for this before, but it seems like overkill to me...at least prior to building an AE system.