First of all - thank you for your work.
If the author does not mind a little criticism, I will allow myself to say a few words.
The mod is quite structurally good and theoretically meets all high quality standards.
For example, that ship changes now spawn and can be looted is a good idea, as is the scanning system.
The problem is exclusively in the field of changes in the characteristics of the ship itself. The penalties imposed by the changed state of the systems force the player to refuse to apply the changes. The player is PUNISHED for bonuses. And while the bonuses are negligible - for a lot of money.
I understand perfectly. that the respected author tried in the so-called "balance", the meaning of which, from my probably erroneous point of view, is exaggerated by the author - probably as a result of the horror he experienced from flying monsters that could be created in the previous mod.
I would take the liberty of suggesting, to the respected author, that the penalties increase exponentially as the number of bonuses increases - completely abandon them in the first three levels of improvements.
I agree with you here.
This is purely personally preference that I preferred the upgrades in pervious version (ESR) where you have the freedom to boost any stats you want without having to sacrifice anything other than resources. It not only allows you to fulfill your power fantasy of your unstoppable flagship but also offered a way to adjust the balance of different mods since you could top off some less-powerful modded ships so they can perform at a level you expected them to be.
I can see the author putting in thoughts so that the trade off of each upgrade is much less significant than the benefit but still, currently every time I upgrade my ship I simply cannot shake off the feeling that I have to sacrifice some of the stats in exchange of the others.
Luckily the author has mentioned the mod is very modular and easy to add your own upgrades. I'm more than willing to fire up my IntelliJ and get my own hands dirty if the author wouldn't mind pointing me to the general direction of adding more upgrades to Exotica Technologies via a separate mod.