Though I agree with crops being made better for people, but that topic has been brought up so many times.
And honestly BC robots, I just couldn't care less, I already have amazing OpenComputers with my recipes overhaul, for making an interesting contraptions with. Though would be great if OpenComputers robots could also see at distance, rather then what right in front of them.
So I don't think "Doing a BC" would be a good thing, as BC just added robots, which people will use, but disjointly from the rest of mod.
Like RailCraft Tanks, Rain Tanks and blast furnaces. People use them disjointly from the rest of mod, for a good reason. As RailCraft rails just not that exiting any more to most people. (Though I still use them my self)
So I believe IC2 is going a right direction, but they need a better master plan and they need to publish it, so we as players can help them with guidance. (And publish obviously here, if it would be published on reddit for example it would devolve quickly).
Currently it lacks balance and interesting interactions, since most if IC2 machines are for the sake of IC2 machines, as it doesn't give a substantial bonus to player.
Thats really armors at fault, so IC2 can introduce a more interesting modular armors for each tier, so not only machines change, but player direct benefit.
Also a better tier system would be nice, since currently there are only two effective tiers, before steel production and after steel production. And thats not much.
Though BC lacks tier system completely at the core, as Laser Assembler from it is not a very good thing, it looks cool though. But with no power loss now set up challenge for it is minimal, and contraption became boring. Only preventing you from making gates and robots before it. Though you can classify it as tier system, it doesn't unlock any more pipes or extends a base idea, it unlocks a separate one.
Though gates are useful they used by minority of people, due to fact that they clunky and BC pipes aren't smart enough to manage basic interactions without crazy amount of wiring and gating and usually just to slow.
In conclusion.
IC2 needs to bring something completely new to the table, or extend it self more in depth. Also just making a more armor tiers and making them modular and expensive would work.
Since existing Modular Power Suites Mod aren't that interesting due to fact that upgrading aren't challenging. Your base suite is suitable for everything and every upgrade, you don't have to replace much and that causes a very little depth in mod.
Though overheating and slowing down due to armor is interesting, it can be easily negated. Or just completely ignored with some upgrades.
Another option is bring huge multi blocks for machines, that could be interesting. Since all other mods which offer similar functionality (besides GregTech for obvious reasons) are rather OP and forgot to balance them against sanity.
Or perhaps more intricate upgrades and machines assembly?
Really there is a lot of options, but making crops slightly easier won't cut it as they don't really do much(besides giving you easy resources occasionally) compare just to exploring. It isn't like it gonna make player reasonably faster for a prolonged amount of time. It is very disjointed.