I do. The plates are the only thing in gregtech that I find un-needed. Granted, it's not hard to make the plates, but it's still an extra step that is not needed.
Its a pain to get some of the materials but it take more time to get down to the endgame experience, while I played the Direwolf20 FTB pack I reached end game in less than a month, then that gets boring. Its a pain but worth the wild with all of the features that it has in it make the game more like real life.
I think GregTech adds a lot of gameplay. I wouldn't say that it was "well-designed" gameplay -- it's a lot of fairly tedious labor, but at least it makes you play? When we first got into the mods (Jon, Cran, I), I think we essentially reached end game in 4-5 days. Day 1 was me trying to build an auto-smelter + pipe network (and with just RP2 -- there wasn't AE/LP at the time). Second day, I built was a from-raw-materials-to-solar panel autocrafter and a dozen different machines. Third/fourth day, nuclear reactor (by Jon) and an abundance of energy. I hadn't even read or watched a single tutorial because it was so straight forward. AUTOCRAFTING BLOCK? PIPES? Derr auto-craft the world. This was before bees though; bees are whacked up, yo.
This is the part of the design of GregTech. Instead of going through the whole tech tree in a few days it extends game play by a week or two, sometimes more depending on how you play or what other mods are installed. Granted, the way the mod does this seems very laborious but wouldn't you say it's worth the extra time? Especially on multiplayer when time spent on team projects is multiplied by the number of people helping. If people want endgame faster or easier, then go play creative mode.
For all the complaints players have about Gregtech making things harder, I would point out that there are numerous recipes and machines that actually make crafting cheaper and less resource intensive. My only complaint regarding GregTech are the large number of duplicate machines needed to reach end-game. For example, the number of generators, industrial centrifuges and electrolyzers adds to the load on the server. It would be nice if there were expensive multiblock machines, that could be used to replace lots of smaller machines. for example a larger industrial centrifuge could cost ten times as much, but would output or cycle ten times the material. I set up a 1.5.1 test world, and really like the new fusion reactor. It does not generate as much power, unless fully upgraded, but fusion is currently a little over powered anyway. Unfortunately server load will likely be higher, as the infrastructure needed to support a fusion reactor is considerably larger.
The GregTech update right before the new fusion reactor added the ability to upgrade machines by right clicking the block with the upgrade you wanted to apply. You can use all the current IC2 upgrades like the transformer and overclocker for great effect. GregTech also adds a MJ upgrade that allows his machines to use MJs from BuildCraft/RailCraft engines as acceptable power. I think the overclocker halves the production time and quadruples the power consumption.
It depends on the person. For me, the fun was trying to think of crazy ideas and seeing the challenge in implementing them. At the time, that was trying to make an automatic network of pipes that everything, and with just RedPower2 and Buildcraft 2 alone. As you may know, both have them have few routing abilities, and so the challenge was thinking of clever solutions. With the auto-crafting of the solar panels, at the time, that was the challenge of trying to figure it out without reading or watching a single tutorial (I am not sure there were any tutorials at the time even). With Logistics Pipes (and Applied Energistics), it was no longer a challenge -- it was just putting stuff together. However, it also gave more options: for example, one project I did with LP was to let our base members write what they wanted (30 cobble, 20 logs, etc.) in a book (and quill) to put in their enderpouch, and they would receive the items. At this point, however, I was scratching the bottom of the barrel for ideas -- that was cool and all, but of limited usefulness -- surely not the scale of the pipe network problem. It didn't take me very long to get it working. That makes GregTech the worst possible mod for me because it's primarily labor-intensive. Making the auto-crafting stuff isn't exciting, because I've been doing that since I first started playing and now it's like child's play. I know, to a lot of people, the auto-crafting thing and pipe network ideas are new, but that's because the idea came to them by seeing other people do it, and not because it occurred to them. What keeps me playing Minecraft is building pretty buildings (and also playing with other people), as that's something I still enjoy. I actually have zero interest in the end-game -- I don't even bother to make the quantum suits and whatnot because it's just work for the sake of work. Sometimes people see me in-game without armor and they think I can't afford it or something, but that's not the case. The one thing I do like about a longer time to reach end-game is that it keeps other people playing longer, especially people I play with. Most people don't enjoy building that much, so if it keeps them playing longer, then it's more time for me to play with them.
Have you tried GregTech automations? There is some routing functionality with Sorters and Inventory Managers. Most people don't use it because it doesn't provide large scale automation for everything. It's meant for single purpose multiblock devices. The best example of this would be with the new Circuit Assembler and Automatic IC2 machines. You can make wonderful little multiblocks without having to worry about running power to each machine because they transmit power to each other.
I haven't but I can't say that I have been too interested about them. Transmitting power to the machines hasn't ever been much a problem -- it's fun seeing how to fit a massive number of parts in such a small space. We usually make "cells" of certain sizes (3x4, etc.) on our factory floor and see if we can jam the machines that we need into those small spaces. Usually we can pull it off and sometimes with only like 1-3 "free" blocks within the cell. Power/piping comes from a grid or loop above and we "pull down" from the ceiling when we need it. Here's a picture of our factory from when we first played (this is an early picture -- we had to double the room's size not long after): The thing in the middle is actually that second machine I built -- the solar panel maker. Fits in a 7x7x4 box and makes IC2 solar panels. It was actually a bit of a pain because RP2 doesn't have an autocrafter and BC leaks items, Logistics Pipes/Additional Pipes were not available, and solar panels require like 8 different recipes, so I also needed buffers in the system. There's only one input chest, one output chest, and it's powered by one single lever to turn it on/off. The cool thing is that every machine in that room is connected to one single pipe network that fed through our entire base (from quarry, to factory, to storage). It wasn't able to autocraft from demand due to RP2 limitations, but it was a start. Anyway, that was MC 1.2.4(?) in January 2012.
Tubestuff has a machine called the retrievulator. By placing it next to a retriever, the on-demand remote orders you're talking about can be achieved with an RP2 system. I considered using them, but between AE, and getting sucked into the vortex that is bee breeding, I have not had the time.
Yeah I know, but that's a recent development. At best the only thing that came along back then was the RP2-compat crafting block in TubeStuff or so, but it was terrible. It didn't even let you suck from it with a retriever and its inventory was all kinds of odd.
