Fed up with Mach3 - what options do i have here??

[Ger21]

Is Mach4 macro language anything like Mach3??

No, nothing at all. Mach4 uses Lua.
Mach4 is far more complex than Mach3, and programming in Lua will require a much better understanding of how Mach4 works than the simple VB scripts in Mach3 do.

Also remember the reason you have problems in the first place. Artsoft writes the software, and third parties develop hardware and write plugins to interface their hardware. For this reason, you'll find that Mach3 functions can and do work very differently, depending on how the plugin for the hardware is written.
Artsoft thought this method worked so well, they'd stick with it for Mach4.
It was CS Labs decision to write their Mach3 plugin the way they did. So your Mach4 experience will be heavily reliant on CS Labs, as is your Mach3 experience.