I recently finished ATM 8 and wanted to provide some feedback which I hope you guys keep in mind for ATM 9 and future packs.

Firstly, it was a great experience - you have made a wonderful pack.

Like some other people, I set myself the challenge of automating the ATM star without using the starry bee. It was a great challenge for anyone who likes automation. Integrated Dynamics was especially useful for automating mods that were not meant to be automated (e.g. Botania). Hostile Neural Networks was also a huge help. However, I couldn't find a way to automate 3 items. The fact that it's just these 3 is especially annoying to me since I got so close to my goal but couldn't get there by just inches. The low number of items that isn't possible is also why I think that in the next packs automation would be an aspect that's easy to keep in mind.

For context, here's the 3 items I wasn't able to automate with a short explanation for each:

• The rose of oblivion requires a player to be present when respawning the ender dragon. Once the dragon is spawned, it's no problem to automate it. There's also no other way of spawning a dragon that I'm aware of. The only way that should work but is sadly bugged is the RFTools syringe: McJtyMods/RFToolsUtility#187
  Maybe it's possible to enable us to respawn the dragon without a player in the end?

• The vengeance essence isn't possible since the piercing vengeance focus needs to be clicked for a few seconds while all blocks that allow simulating a click only simulate short clicks. Maybe there's a way to enable blocks like the modular router to use the piercing vengeance focus? Or you could add some machine form of the vengeance focus.

• The gem dust from apotheosis isn't possible to automate since there is no way to get the gems without player interaction. All blocks that simulate player kills don't make this work. Maybe there is a way to enable blocks like the Mob Grinding Utils' mob masher to get these gems.

I don't expect you to change anything about ATM 8 at this point but I just wanted to point out how close you actually were to the ATM star being possible to automate completely without putting a lot of effort into that goal in particular. Therefore, I think that the possibility of automation should be part of your process when coming up with future recipes for the ATM star.

Talking about ATM 9 specifically, I think this would be especially important for the Greg star. It is supposed to revolve around a mod that does make many things harder but is also centred on automation. It would be a shame if there were one or two items in the recipe that would prevent people from automating the star completely.

1. You can chunk load all the crystals on the obsidian towers and the bedrock portal on the center, then you can use create hands to place crystals
2. You can use ars nouveau containment ritual to catch vengeance spirit in the jar, and then produce vengeance essence with drygmy charms
3. Yeah, I don't know how to automize it yet😅

I think the point is to grind out some of those things. The rose of oblivion you only need 1 for a Star. There's no point in automating that at all.
I got 9 roses from one dragon fight, so not sure that's going to be a problem.
I have vengeance spirit in a jar and I've fought enough mobs that I have more gem dust than I know what to do with.
Seriously, spend some time in the Other and you'll be set for life.

Hello there, how did you automate the flight modules? They need ghast syringes.
Also the player flesh, for which you need to die to get.

For the syringes I believe I used either a modular router or a player simulator to hit ghasts with an empty syringe - I'm not quite sure. To spawn the ghast you can use Industrial Foregoing's mob duplicator or RFTools spawner.

For the flesh I believe werewolf flesh is also accepted. You can use a Mob Duplicator here as well to spawn that villager that transforms into a werewolf. I set up a computercraft computer to detect the moon phase. And just set up a farm that always ran during the full moon night.