AE2 has cemented itself as the go-to storage tech mod, and for good reason. The original Applied Energistics was the forerunner for mods like this and the sequel expanded on it in every way.

The channel system in the mod pushes you towards designing more efficient (and performant) storage systems, rather than spamming expensive block entities. Some people dislike this, but even if thats the case it's entirely configurable. Even without the channel system, AE2 is - in my experience - the most performant storage mod.

The way networks work is incredibly powerful, with subnets allowing for incredibly powerful but simple setups, allowing you to easily expand and modularise your storage rather than just making wire spaghetti.

My main gripe with this mod is how slow automating some of its machines can be, though addons solve this problem entirely. Some performance issues occur with giant storage setups, but that's to be expected and it's much better than mods like Simple/Refined Storage from my testing.

Would highly recommend for any tech/expert pack that needs a storage tech mod!

I am new to the Minecraft modding scene and have not tried Refined storage or anything, but from my tens of hours of using it in my own modpack it is truly a amazing mod, i love the autocrafting and the aesthetics, it is a bit of micromanaging as usual in tech mods in the early game but i had a blast with it in the mid-game, i still haven't gotten to the late-game, i have a beefy computer and didn't notice a performance impact, even with shaders.

The mod starts with you collecting meteors, or rather the core of it that has weird ancient alien technology that allows you to interact with the "matter energy" of everything (from the lore standpoint)

Now this whole apparatus turns out to be a complex and beautiful interactable storage and automation solution. By literal meanings, from taking the chip mold in the meteor, to putting those to your press to catalyze your creation of silicon wafers, redstone paste, and diamond chips for the goal of making an engineering microcontroller for your computer components, which turns into a set of storage drives, cables, terminals, and of course the main controller of your system itself.

A single ME controller connected to a dense cable connected to 32 ME storage drives, with each of those containing 10 of 256k ME storage cells and exhausted all 63 types it can hold, you can theoretically compact 340 million items all into those 32 channels, yep, absurd amount of storage logistics. Then we can start touching with P2P and extract all the 21504 channels, you get the storage of 228 billion items, or about 0.006% of the entire Minecraft world, and this is still in a rather workable condition, some more advanced (addon maxed) AE2 setups can have things in the trillions, quadrillions, or even quintillions and somehow still work to supply your base, just to show how optimized this whole system is. This doesn't even mention that with all of those connectivity you can also connect this big storage of yours directly to your machines and control all of them through your AE2 system. Truly the king of logistics.

All of this information can shun people from actually using AE2 as it works in the same way as a router in your home with channels and so, but trust me, this mod is the literal best logistics you can setup for any size of base. It has almost zero presence in the early early game, but scales very fast.

TL:DR, this mod is extremely versatile, extremely useful, extremely optimized, and is simply the reason why people could even finish modpacks like GTNH, Deserves an 11/10.

I would not play any quest/tech modpack if it didn't have AE2 in it. This mod is essential for large scale storage and automation. There are some nbt/lag issues and the textures could be better, but the mod itself is one of the best and most enduring ever made.

Playing with modded Minecraft is one heck of an awesome experience (or... it can be). But there is a bit of a problem... most mods add plenty of items to your game, usually both items as well as new crafting ingredients. For example techmods have a tendency to add all sorts of new metal ores to your world, magic mods might provide a plethora of magical items and tools (not to mention ingredients)....

Question: where are you going to store all of that? Because trust me when I say that a vanilla double chest is going to run out of storage space really quickly.

Matter energy networks

Fortunately there's a solution: matter energy. Applied Energistics 2 ("AE2") introduces us to an alien technology which turns out to be very useful for our logistic needs. You see, instead of storing your items in chests you're now able to "digitize" them and store them onto a storage unit instead. These storage units can be used in "ME chests" which give you access to one storage unit. Or you can use so called "ME drives" which provide access to 10 storage units at once.

Simply put: a full storage room filled to the brim with double chests can now be replaced with one single block: the ME drive.

Very satisfying mechanics

This mod tries to combine "real world" computer mechanics with those of Minecraft, and I really enjoy this part. You see... it all starts with finding meteors which contain strange "presses". You can use these presses with a so called inscriber which allows you to turn use a press to create a circuit. You do this by applying a specific material, materials like gold, diamond or certus quartz. Once you have a circuit you can now make yourself a processor; this is done by combining the circuit with printed silicone and one redstone dust. You do realize that silicone is the key element of most computer chips, right?

And that's roughly how you get started. Set up your network (make sure you got enough power) and from there on out you'll have easy and quick access to your entire storage.

The best part? You don't even have to bother too much with your existing storage either: just use so called 'import busses' on your current chests so that you gain access to them within your ME network as well, easy!

Ever wanted to have access to your storage from within other dimensions? Well... now you can.

I honestly cannot see myself play modded without this one.