Drakeero

I appreciate the supportive responses. It's much nicer than what I've gotten from the official MC forums and reminds me of the Bay12 DF forums.

Ah yes, I was originally disappointed with the Buildcraft Quarry doing "all the work for you" with set-up. On the other hand, I sort of need it. Even as a starter, I still have difficulty learning how to set up more complex mechanisms because of certain coordination and sequencing difficulties in my head. Finding tutorials is hard. Things like the Technic Pack Wiki will address blocks individually, but not go into enough detail for me on how things will interact with one another or how to conceptualize contraptions [and then fill in the necessary components later]. I also don't have sound so Youtube guides really don't work very well for me either. Are there any good descriptions of projects that one would recommend for a starter?

Couple of friends pulled me into Tekkit. Impressed by the various machines, I began to try to play around, but the recipe lists don't really differentiate between which mod adds which content, and my friends aren't exactly too enthusiastic about figuring it out. All I know is my first functional creations are "Quarry" machines that I believe are parts of Buildcraft. Elsewhere I saw a mysteriously closed thread mentioning that Buildcraft is a bit of a resource hog, had some original piping issues, and just not as sophisticated as Redpower. Can Redpower support everything that Buildcraft can do? (literally or spiritually) For example can I still set up automated quarries? It'd be nice to know before I get too used to Buildcraft's features.