I do think that totally lossless transmutations aren't amazing for balance.
Thaumcraft has a much nicer system to handle that, but Equivalent Exchange is still very nice, especially when you get to constructions that require many thousand (x)
I am a bit extreme, but MoM has it right.
I can see the point, but lossless transmutations aren't inherently unbalanced. You can transmute cobblestone to diamond sure... if you dig up 8100 cobblestone. Most of the extreme transmutations in EE could be done quicker by hand just finding the material and mining it. The transmutation part of the mod is just for convenience really. Also I love the mercurial eye, because it's amazing. Plug in klein star and 1 stone brick, make stone brick walls evarwhere! (deducting the price of stone brick, of course... but who wants to make 13,000 stone bricks really? Or carry them in stacks of 64?) Without energy collectors, every point of EMC represents work you have done, and the values are weighted to the rarity of the item.
Different strokes, I suppose. I find I appreciate EE the most when I need JUST ONE MORE of x material to finish my project and I don't want to go mining for 30 minutes to find that one item so I can transmute some other stuff I don't need right at this moment.
Also recycling old tools into EMC is nice, rather than chucking them in a fire.
I don't even get how collectors got in to EE in the first place actually. It completely goes against the spirit of the mod and that is why it breaks the game. Basically it makes something out of nothing when the mods whole focus is alchemy where EMC doesn't magically appear or disappear when transmuting things.
Yeah, I think it was supposed to be something like solar collectors for IC2 but they made them far too powerful. IC2 solar is incredibly resource and time expensive and outputs a very small amount of energy per unit as well as taking up a large amount of space and having strict guidelines (ie, only works during the day/must see the sky) where EE energy collectors are magic generators which consume no fuel. Put a torch above a Mk1 collector and you have enough EMC to make another torch in 32 seconds. And the collector/relay interaction doesn't help.
1 collector = 1 EMC/sec
6 collectors = 6 EMC/sec
6 collectors + 1 relay = 12 EMC/sec
6 mk3 collectors + 1 mk3 relay = 96 EMC/sec
Once you make a standard Mk3 array you can plug in a klein star, go make a sandwich, come back and have several million EMC.