We learned early on for EE to log off right next to, or near, the collectors, relays, etc. When we did not do this, they would not collect. And all the items were still collecting, even if everyone was logged off, until this problem recently. The tick issue seems to be per player, as some do not have this issue and some do, and others it comes and goes. We have had one player with the tick issue, go off-line for awhile to see if whatever they did fix an item, with 2+ of us still on when they went off-line, and it still would not collect.
Now we do know that a quarry and a few other goodies do not work if no one is near or the player is not on-line, but EE EMC collection and IC2 power generation, along with the coke ovens used to work just fine regardless if someone was on or not.
And this is going to sound a bit stupid, chunk loader blocks? NM, read up on what they do, but have never had a need to use them before.
As for the IC2 power, so far it has affected only one player, and they took their power array down twice. First time setup after the take down, still wasn't working when he wasn't on-line. 2nd time it finally did work.
I am pretty sure everything is related. Another player and I had a 3x3 pool of infinite water setup, with a pump above the center to take the water. He had a pump powered by 4 redstone engines going to a water strainer to see how good it would be to generate power. He would log off for the night and come back to ALL his 3x3 pools being empty. I had 2 pumps close together, but in their own 3x3 pools, being powered by a peat engine each. One pool was not having any issue, but the other pool would be half "drained" with only a 1x3 strip still being infinite.
Everything was running fine, until we started this world to add more players...so it has us all stumped as to what's going on.