So, here are my thoughts after a long use of ESR followed up with the immediate adoption of Exotica. Specifically about exotics. I think Bandwidth is actually a pretty good solution. The previous system of upgrading the base ship to then upgrade the upgraded stats was clunky and tedious. Bandwidth does not necessarily fix this, other than making the random roll on quality far more important for if the ship is simply going to be fully buffed in one category without any bandwidth upgrades. It does however make upgrades feel more natural to me, like allocating resources. But getting a ship with a low bandwidth roll can still be mitigated by one Alpha Core, allowing to upgrade one thing that can massively buff the ship. You really only need one or two upgrades with Exotica to still make very powerful ships. the Alpha Core integration led me to question why all Ai cores weren't already exotic upgrades. You get into the weeds and demanding if you even ask for different ships to utilizes cores differently, but that does also sound interesting. It wouldn't solve the exotic item bloat issue any, especially if the Alphacore was just split up into the smaller cores. But I don't mind item bloat, personally. Using ET with EHM has completely changed how I play this game and I don't want to go back. Also, I would find it interesting to have more uses for AI cores in the game, really. In regards to the other items, I recall someone in Discord a while back, maybe you, asking for ideas for what to do with the phasefield engine, before it was actually used on phase-ships. More phase exotics would be interesting, especially if you aren't running unusual hullmods. They have a similar problem to Carriers. All the hangar forge does is reduce time on things, it offers no novel change to how a ship is used. Similar to its counterpart, Hacked Missile Forges. The speed feeder, the Drive Vent, and the Plasma Catalyst all give you novel ways to build around or enhance a ship. Well, Plasma Catalyst more or less just frees up OP for more hullmods and can be easily remedied by proper captain skill investment, but that is still a much mroe tangible change than simply "free missiles lul" and simply buffing all carriers across the board flatly. Not to say that your mod should be taxed to cover vanilla's gaps, Fighters Expanded and Modern Carriers can do that, as can Unusual Hullmods.
Just things I've been thinking about. The quality of work on these two mods and the frequent fixes are outstanding. You do great work, thank you.