Brigadon

I actually like the stupid spawns. a couple of runs with minions, and I am set to start committing crimes against nature. the mining grind has been supplanted by the experimentation/research grind, which is a nice change of pace.

if only they would address the bone dupe bug from putting out biofossils and then break them.

No offense, but yes, that was sorta psycho get some minions out, have them dig some iron and diamonds out, and make some iron or diamond armor... there's no possible reason you should have to wear wooden armor for more than one night :P

you are supposed to use the stencil to paint the block. after the block is painted you can get the stencil back

you have to commit 4 acts of evil by hitting the 'z' key. each of these evil acts cost you two experience levels. in addition, summoning your minions once you have the staff costs you your full food bar, and each command given costs you a chunk of your food bar. These requirements are not bad, however, considering the fact that minions essentially replaces pretty much every 'automining' mod, from buildcraft to computercraft, and is extremely useful for underground lair building as well. They also fit the theme of the pack, 'mad scientist', extremely well.

Can you use a different power source? Or a chunkloader?

Hell no. Inventory tweaks interferes directly with the minions mod, badly. Of the two, minions is a better fit. Inventory tweaks is overused. I would enjoy better storage, though. the rest of the stuff? bc, IC2, TC, etc? That's all in the other packs. heck, I'd rather there were something other than MFR and TE in there also... they are massively overused, although not as bad as those others. You know, Rotarycraft and Better furnaces could definitely replace those for ore processing and farming automation... not to mention mechanicka is underutilized and very much fits the theme (is it mechanicka? the automation mod that used to be UE but finally ditched it's insane api) I do, however, entirely agree with the extra utilities mod. The angel block alone vastly expands the possibilities for stuff like space stations, and the peaceful table allows you to shift the gameplay to building and such if wrestling with blazes isn't your thing. World and generation tweaks could be a nice, low-profile addin as well.

Not to mention that MFR's biofuel generator will run TE stuff just fine as well... and while it might not be the most efficient engine around, it is MAD convenient (It makes up for this inefficiency by shutting OFF when no power is being drawn out of it) as well as using biofuel which is, in the end, made out of crap you mostly don't need.

There's no planes or cars in the modpack. if you want to add them, feel free to do so.

Minions and Inventory Tweaks are dramatically incompatible, and have been since 1.2.5 Neither mod author has the slightest interest in addressing this incompatibility. I find Minions to be a lot more useful than inventory tweaks, but the mod's author, atomicstryker, is NO pleasure to deal with. I'd sooner stick my hand in a blender than listen to his whining.

Wow, it's almost like installing the 'utility mob' pack... only without, like, skeleton heads. or cool dudes you can dress up in quantum armor. You know, I think utility mobs is open source, might be a useful place to look for ideas? If someone made a robotic version of 'minecolony', I might actually start playing again nothing is as much fun as running your own little city of robots capable of building stuff :)