The problem is not that mining is difficult, the problem is that its actually increadibly easy, a complete non-challenge. Building self-sufficient resource processing center's and mines is half the fun.
Removing Quarries would not make the game harder, only consume more time.
If all this happens anyway, will their still be redpower frames?
I never said I was removing quarries completely, I said they would be sold in a shop and not freely crafted and that they'd be far more expensive that normal. Frame equipment too, will be sold in an admin shop. Basically anything that can wreak utter havoc on the economy will be controlled. You won't be able to generated a billion UU matter with a solar array and a mass fab, you will be able to buy UU matter from an admin shop. And as I said, if you still want ezmode you can always play the other server... whichever one suits you. Quarries and frame quarries are much better in a singleplayer setting, multiplayer games with an economy should require some player effort to get the resources.
I was thinking about UU matter again today. I may not have to disable any of the recipes actually, just price it at or above the highest resource cost so the point of buying it is convenience (transmutable to any resource) rather than lolmoney. 9 UU matter makes a diamond, so I could price it at 1/9th of a diamond's worth in the economy and it should be fine.
Say a Diamond is 1500☼ for example(just an arbitrary value)... I could safely price UU matter at 170☼ because 170*9=1530 which is more than 1530, no gain in monies by making a diamond.
Four UU matter makes 2 gold ore, which is 4 gold ingots after processing. If a gold ingot is 90☼(again, arbitrary and may change) then 4 ingots is worth 360 while four UU matter is 680. Again, no monetary gain.
Doing that would make UU matter only useful for its mutability and for crafting iridium, rather than making each mass fabricator a free resource/money dispenser.
As I said though, this is still all up in the air pending testing.
This way powerful/overpowered items will go to people with an investment in the server who I know(hope) will not use them in a silly manner, like making massive quarry pits right next to town for example or blowing up half the map with EE items. (Assuming I even allow EE items, once EE updates...)
Personally, I am not for McMMO. One of the reasons I like minecraft is that investment of time gets pseudo-physical things (houses, contraptions). Something that is "yours". Skills, however, are not dynamic in any such way. They are an integer that can do only one thing with the investment of time. You can do nothing interesting with them. (I am not a fan of MMO's)
Now I really do not get your point about the McMMO thing. All it does is add skills which increase as you perform an action. You don't even have to participate, and they only grant you positive abilities. There is no downside, no catch. You mine and you gain mining skill and you might mine more than normal. You have lost nothing over the vanilla minecraft, its just a way to reward people who mine a lot, by increasing their base yield over time.
Another thing it does is allow you to use axes in combat, which perform differently from swords, and lets you get better at unarmed combat too.
Skills don't need to be dynamic, they are simply a reward. McMMO was just an example though, there are several systems which work for this. Another one lets you earn skill points over time and allocate them as you see fit, rather than gaining skill in the action you are performing.