batavia, junk pirates and valks are the ones i use the most.
- junk pirates are really well balanced. I always have these guys on.
- Batavia, i dont know i just like the ships and weapons, although i guess the hailstorms seem a bit overpowered. Could use another ship or two.
- Valks are annoying but fun to play against. A lot of thier stuff is overpowered but they have some serious repairing and logistics problems so i guess that balances it mostly. Range of the valk MRM says 2500 but its more like 5000 (sorry cant remember its name, has an orange warhead(scorpion maybe?))
- I like neutrinos but they're super annoying to fight against in exelerin
- I really liked starsector plus (especially skill tree changes) but now that it needs shaderlib i cant really play it for performance reasons. Actually anything that requires shaderlib i dont bother with. Looks ok, but not so good that it's worth the performance hit on my lappy.
- shadowyards, blackrock and nomads are pretty good, no complaints, but i don't use them much anymore
- Interstellar federation are one of my all time favorites, but i think the mods dead.
- Love tore up plenty ships. Only the big blue "basic" cruiser seems overpowered. Long triangular shaped, has 3 graviton beams stock.. i think maybe Oddyssey? Too much flux dissapation imo.
- Love Exelerin
Another great faction was one i can't remember the name of, had brown coloured versions of vanilla ships... I think the aurora knock-off was called the intrepid. Also had a sweet conquest version. Their ships were a bit faster and structually less sound then their vanilla counterparts and used mostly ballistic. Pretty sure that mods dead too.
Haven't really played enough of the other mods to say much about them.