It's GregTech without the Greg

please note that this review is made while I'm in midgame - I have not finished the pack yet

If you're unfamiliar with what that exactly means: it's GregTech without all the tedium, nanocrafting (as I've come to call it) and overall labor that goes into it. It's not New Horizons, which you shouldn't even think about finishing, nor is it Omni/Nomi/Monifactory, which streamlines the torture of GregTech. It's something else.

StaTech Industries removes the "Greg" from the "Tech" completely, creating a much friendlier and approachable version of a factory-sim. It's still extremely complex, having multiple tiers, advanced processing lines, a deep, deep quest book and a lot of mechanics that are almost the same as in GregTech. If you're familiar with the distinction between rougelikes and rougelites, it's kinda exactly like that - it's a Greglite, not a Greglike.

But all the recipes are a bit simpler, the machines are easier to get, nothing explodes in your face, there aren't a million byproducts to every recipe and every single processing chain is about ten times faster by default. For me, this is awesome - GregTech has always been extremely overwhelming and way too punishing for me, especially with the prices of new machines and the time it took to get to the "meat" of the pack (optimizing and setting up production lines).

The downside is, of course, that the meat isn't as well seasoned as in GregTech. Challenge invites satisfaction (yes, I did quote Hamilton, what are you gonna do about it?) - and less challenge brings a little less of it. There are points in the pack where I felt like automation could be skipped completely by someone with enough grit, which feels like a cardinal sin of a factory modpack. I also missed some of the parts of GregTech, namely the advanced ore processing and extraction and a few of the more complex crafting chains.

The biggest flaw of the progression has been, at least to me, a very weird split of unlocking AE2 in half. You get a bunch of cables and interfaces first and only unlock the storage a siginificant amount of time later. Since the pack already has an early-game storage solution, this feels needlessly convoluted and misleading (and it's the star taken off from gameplay).

A big benefit over GregTech is also that the pack is beautiful and much more stable. All the textures are from Modern Industrialization and there are a bunch of industrial-style deco mods in the pack as well - not to mention a bunch of really cool multiblocks that take away from the "magic box tech pack" feeling a lot.

Overall, a huge recommendation for people who always felt like they would love GregTech, but felt overwhelmed by it, as well as for anybody who fees like giving factory modpacks a shot.