Making projects like Mechaenetia are really painful, during its lack at positive feedback at beginning (All of the ideas can’t be implemented before the framework is done), and to be frank, the ideas have going so far that trapped the beginning progress. Therefore, the sudden motivation to mechaenetia is hard to keep. At least, the similar phenomena happen on me. I’m usually be intermittently motivated and passionately on the project, but when really writing codes, I’m tend to feel dizzy and frustrated because it appeared nothing have been done. So, apart from influence of Factorio, mechaenetia is still hard to start out, and it might not be the best thing to do now.
Also, you are still making gregtech 6, which is based on Minecraft 1.7.10. It can be really “sentimental” to me, because 1.7.10 is still losing its vitality, and gregtech 6 just like a tower being built on the quicksand. But undoubtedly, updating gregtech6 to higher versions is almost impossible, thus a new version of gregtech might be a solution. Certainly, remaking such a big mod is a difficult work, but it is still more motivating than sticking in mechaenetia, because vanilla Minecraft have finished the most painful part.
At last, I need to apologize for my thoughtless words. My English is really poor, and I haven’t learnt about how to speaking politely in English formally, but I hope that my views are successfully conveyed.
Even if i did GT7 it would STILL be in 1.7.10. 
One of the many good things of sticking to 1.7 is the cross-mod compatibility between Gregtech and basically every mod ever made under the sun.
I still remember the GT5(U? It might have not been an official addition now that I think about it) magic generators for Thaumcraft integration that would create electricity and spew out tons of flux in the chunk. It’s really the minecraft version I come back to the most even 8+ years later.
Best version ever made
I’ve thought about GT7 before, even looked the term up to see if there was some port that called itself GT7. Whenever us Humans see a number, we always wonder “Hey what if that number was different?”.
Clearly you did not end up with a scammy Racing Game or something in the results. XD
It always annoyed me slightly how many things used the acronym GT[number here], I looked up “GT6” and I get racing games and companies.