ProjectGear
Discord link
Crafttweaker sheet (for devs)
Project Gear is a pack designed around large, complex, and interesting factories. Expect to build Immersive Engineering multiblock crushers, Botania tree farms and Buildcraft laser-powered crafting tables.
This pack is very carefully balanced so that those inefficient factories are the best option available. This is not an expert mode pack, though. It's a sandbox, kitchen-sink pack where no mods are required, and there are always multiple ways to solve a problem.
Interesting automation:
We looked at every machine you'd want to make, from automatic mining to farming leather, and chose the options we thought were the most fun to automate. Magic, one block solutions were removed in favor of things like PneumaticCraft pressure chambers and Botania orechids.
For example, there are no easy / simple autocrafting solutions. Charset's crafter is large and slow, but free to operate. Factory Tech's crafter has parts that wear out and need to be replaced, but is faster. Buildcraft's advanced crafting table requires lasers to run, but it's by far the fastest. That's the one you probably want to attach to your ME system. Etcetera, etcetera. All of the "simple" crafters are disabled.
Long processing chains:
Many resources can be made in small quantities with fairly normal means, but if you want large amounts of that item or more by-products there's usually a more complex way to get it. There are a lot of interchangeable processes that you can mix and match to fit your needs, they require multiple machines and resources from different mods, but might be more efficient, faster or have more by-products. These are of course completely optional, but once you reach end game you may want to automate several of them.
Polished:
We've put a lot of effort into quality of life improvements. Microparts, facades, filled cans and other clutter are hidden in JEI. Silver, lead, aluminum and a few other ingots were removed to cut down on worldgen clutter. Rich documentation for machines and other JEI entries to make learning the pack more intuitive. When you start a new world, you get an akashic tome containing every single guide book. The pack also includes plenty of quality of life mods, such as CleanView, Better Placement, Toast Control and Harvest.
If two mods can do the same task in a very similar way, we remove one of them. This prevents feature-creep, cuts down on clutter, and often makes the pack more balanced. If two mods can do the same task in different ways, or fit different roles, we try to keep both in the pack and balance them. Choosing between two auto smelters when one is faster and cheaper isn't much of a choice. If one requires more effort to automate, but has better yields, then it's a meaningful decision. Both have upsides and trade-offs.
Mods:
Main mods: These form the backbone of the pack
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Immersive Engineering + addons
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Factory Tech
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Magneticraft
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Forestry + addons
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Botania
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PneumaticCraft
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Buildcraft
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Applied Energistics
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RFTools
Other notable mods:
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Water Control Extreme - Water is finite unless you're in a river, ocean or swamp biome. You can pump it there and bring it to your base, squeeze items like fish and melons into water, use rain collectors, or set up water wells.
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Random Things - Adds a lot of fun tools, such as a way to control machines by typing in chat, blocks that you can walk through but mobs can't, and bouncy plates.
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RS Wires, Simple Logic, Automated Redstone, Minecoprocessors - Redstone is fun
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Autoverse, Integrated Dynamics, RFTools Control, Modular Routers - Logistics is fun
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Backpacks!, /dank/null, Waystones, Ore Excavator (nerfed) - Automation is challenging, but we didn't want to nerf manual tools. You can freely teleport between areas, but automatically teleporting items from your quarry to your base requires effort.