Lol you're taking it a bit more seriously than you should xD they became 'evil' And yea you dont need 'allies'. all you need is friends
I can reacall more than a few situations that I couldn't have gotten through without help (mostly jim <3 )
Andrew, you should check TE 1.6.4, its MUCH different now, for example the power conduits dont have input/output support anymore, its all done by the energy cell
Also I dont find power armor a priority, its high up on the list but I usually dont make it untill I have ore doubling going and a steady power source, sometimes even a ME network
Also the power armor upgrades like jetpack etc are much more expensive bcz of the new tesseract recipe