MechaCrash

Setting up the bucket filler is a lot simpler than stringing together all those other machines, so I wouldn't say it's completely redundant. It is, however, coded by a dickhead, so fuck that guy. The Biofuel Bottler of Forestry will be able to create lava cells in future versions of Tekkit, however, so while it wouldn't have been redundant in Tekkit 1.0, it will be redundant in the future.

Plus, I think it needs to have a Bukkit version.

Yes, a Minecraft update will break everything, so once you have all your mods and plugins and whatnot the way you like them, do not update Minecraft. This may change once the modding API comes out, but don't hold your breath.

Re: 6 chamber Nuclear Reactor Setup My preferred nuclear reactor setup is here. It's a Mark II, so you can just throw the uranium in and let it run until it's empty, and as long as you let it cool down between full cycles, it will never explode. It's also pretty efficient and gives 120 EU/t, which I think is pretty good. It's also a lot cheaper than most Mark II reactors with the same efficiency and output. I'd give credit to the original designer, but sadly, I don't know who did it. Alternately, you can use a few Geothermal Mark II generators and liquid teleport pipes. I found that if you build a golden waterproof pipe and stick two generators on each side and two on top, you can pump lava into them from a tank and keep them all running. It produces the same 120 EU/t, but because it doesn't need to stop and cool down, the effective EU/t is higher. Of course, it brings a different set of challenges and limitations, but at least none of them turn your base into a crater if you fuck something up.

No, one RP rubber log gives eight sticks. A normal log turns into four planks, which also turns into eight sticks. RP trees are basically useless, and only good if you really need a lot of rubber, have an extractor, and are short on resin.

If you take the wood from a RedPower rubber tree and stick it in an Industrialcraft extractor, it will make one piece of rubber, just like the rubber wood from the Industrialcraft rubber trees. They can also be broken down into sticks if you need them, as they give eight sticks per log, skipping the planks step, and you can cook it in a furnace to get charcoal.

The exploding blocks are due to the Nether Ores mod. When that mod is installed, you can find coal, redstone, iron, and diamonds in the nether. If you have mods which use it, you can also find tin and copper. The benefits are that the ores are relatively plentiful in the Nether. The downsides are that they require extra processing (smelt it to get the normal drop; e.g. to turn nether iron into iron ore, which you can then macerate or cook directly), mining them counts as a hostile act to the locals, and the aforementioned tendency to explode. The blocks are supposed to make the same hissing sound that armed TNT and creepers do. In SMP, they do not. This is a known issue.

Are you going to bother with the rest of the stuff from the Extra Pipes mod? The teleport pipes and chunk loaders are the big ones, since nothing else does that, but the others do have occasional (if largely replicable with Buildcraft) uses.

Tubes are inherently smarter and easier to use than pipes, but you're stuck with pipes if you want to move liquids around, and a lot of machinery can automatically push their output into pipes, but not tubes. I also think that the logic gates of Buildcraft 3 will give pipes a place again, because they'll be much more programmable than pipes. Of course, you can probably fake it with structure pipes and use tubes anyway for most purposes, but such is life. As for the specific Zeldo's Additional Pipes mod people keep asking for, I think it's specifically because of the teleport pipes and chunk loaders, because nothing in RedPower replicates those.

Technic 5.0.5 for Minecraft 1.0 has Equivalent Exchange. Technic 6 for Minecraft 1.1 currently does not, as far as I can tell. Equivalent Exchange is being updated for Minecraft 1.1 (and being rebuilt again), but I don't know if it will be ready in time for Technic 6, or if there are plans to include it.

Tekkit is the multiplayer version of Technic. There is no multiplayer version of Equivalent Exchange. So no, Tekkit does not have Equivalent Exchange. You can attempt to install it manually, but doing so will probably keep you from using that client to join a multiplayer server.

You can build nuclear explosives in Tekkit. You do so by placing one refined uranium at the cardinals, one gunpowder at each corner, and one gunpowder in the middle. Note that it is possible for the server administrator to disable the ability to make these, so if the recipe doesn't work, that is probably why. Do not use these to clear out rubber trees. You will probably not like the results. If you're playing on someone else's server and you really want to nuke a rubber tree, check the server's rules. They may frown on the use of nuclear weapons.

I assume the new guy maintaining it has not fixed the bad code that went into it?

RP2 rubber trees don't burn. If you're so inclined, you can take advantage of this by hollowing one out and filling it with lava. To get rid of them, you can use a Buildcraft filler set for the Flatten pattern, which is three bricks along the bottom and three glass in the middle. Use landmarks to stake out the area around the tree, hook power into the filler, and give it a moment. You'll have to collect all the wood it drops manually, if you give a crap about it, but it'll get rid of the tree. Using an axe from Equivalent Exchange is a better solution, but since EE isn't in Tekkit, this will also work on multiplayer servers.