why I'm allergic to AE2 (and Refined Storage)

I love modded minecraft, and play a lot of packs, but almost always give up in the midgame, and mostly because of one mod - applied energistics 2. It's a widely loved mod, but I want to give my take on it and why I really don't like it (note: all of this also applies to refined storage and other mods that work the same way)

first, some context. AE2 is a mod that adds a lot of tools for storage, logistics on a large scale, automatic crafting, and other useful tools. It basically provides a whole system for managing your base, working with crafting, integrating all your production lines and providing an overview of everything you have all from one GUI. Unlocking AE2 in a modpack is usually a massive paradigm shift away from feeding machines by hand and having specific production chains for things to having everything automated through the AE network. This sounds like a wonderful, useful tool, right! Well, yeah. It's really powerful. Which leads to my main problem with it.

AE2 is too powerful

It is one thing to have a later-game unlocked tool that provides more very powerful options in your factory designs. Bots in factorio are like that - they provide anywhere-to-anywhere on demand logistics of any item with almost no infrastructure, which is ridiculously powerful compared to the other logistics systems like trains and belts. But importantly, bots are limited. They're slower than other options for longer distances, they have limited carrying capacity, and managing them to get good throughput requires careful placement of roboports.

AE2 provides a similar huge shift, but with no downsides. There is literally no reason to not use AE for literally every large scale logistical and production operation in your entire base. It scales infinitely, is ridiculously more capable than all the other options in most packs, can automate operations that other mods struggle to, and integrates with literally everything. Addon mods for it even add the ability to transfer everything through the network, including energy, items, fluids, gasses, etc. Transfer time is practically instant, interfaces are fast enough for everything and can be speed upgraded to be even faster, and the crafting system can understand ridiculously complex chains without any issues.

The way AE2 tries to make this not just an instant solves-all-your-problems mod is through the use of channels. This is the one game mechanic that makes using it at all interesting and not just an instant solution to everything - essentially, only a limited number of devices can be connected to a given cable before it runs out of capacity. This is intended to force you to think about your network architecture, and it does to a point, but it's not enough to not make AE2 feel too much like a magic bullet. A single ME dense cable can carry 32 channels (aka, connect to 32 machines) - which is already a lot, but if you consider that each of those channels can carry a peer to peer connection, which each compacts 32 channels down into 1, you can carry 512 channels in one cable. This makes channels practically a joke, and even a very basic network design making use of P2P tunnels practically entirely removes this limitation.

All of this would be fine, if it was a system that it was fun to play with. But AE2 is also just not fun to play.

AE2 makes the game not fun

After you unlock AE2 in a modpack, given its incredible power, you have basically no reason, except if you are doing a self-imposed challenge, to not use it for everything. And using AE2 sucks. It's all just clicking around in a GUI. It's barely gameplay - it feels like work. Especially during the transition from running a base on dedicated production lines to running it on AE, which takes hours of programming patterns and debugging network interface connections. It sucks, and I hate it, and there's often no way around it because AE2 is baked into the questlines, or the only viable option for managing your factory on a larger scale than a single production line. Once you unlock AE, the way you expand your factory stops being building new production lines and more just, wiring up yet another machine to some free space on your ME network and programming 40 new patterns.

In conclusion, we need more modpacks with interesting logistics options and AE2 is just boring af.