Is it safe to assume that it's unintentional for the VRI faction to have access to any and all modded faction ships and the Remnant Prismatic variant in addition to their own and anything labeled high-tech?
I see them both fielding and selling ships and weapons from every faction mod I'm running, as well as a considerable number of Explorarium drones. I'm not sure if the Explorarium ships are there because I'm using the Domain Explorarium Expansion mod or if those would be appearing normally, though I suspect it's because of the mod since it adds a blueprint for every Explorarium ship and I do see VRI running ships unique to the mod about as much as I see vanilla ones.
The VRI does have a 0.05 rare_bp frequency in their factional fleets, which is intentional, it's more of a mechanism to highlight the 'salvager' aspect of the VRI. The only BP's that the VRI Has access to is its own, and rare_bp, at the previously mentioned frequency. Not sure why they're fielding explorarium derelicts, but, yknow, that's just how things work when you start throwing a bunch of mods together, and in this case, it's a pretty big risk doing this with VRI, because rare_bp covers a LOT of hulls. Considering removing this.
From a practical perspective it makes it extremely tedious to acquire VRI's hardware even before the exorbitant price tag on half the ships, and from a role-playing perspective it just doesn't make sense and feels really weird (and does nothing to help the concern brought up by Great Wound in the past).
Not sure what you mean by this. I've made the prices reasonable as of the 0.3 update, nor do i get how else it could be difficult to acquire them. They're available on the open market, you can acquire their blueprints, and you can find them out in the sector pretty regularly in independent fleets, and as derelicts. The extreme pricing was initally implemented to prevent players from snowballing, due to the bonus of the VRI flux network, however, i've changed them back to reasonable levels due to the implementation of the FP limit.
On the subject of mod ships, I would say you could consider keeping them in the mod but implementing them in such a way that the faction will only use or sell (in market or special production contract) them if the player has enabled the mod the ship is originally from. That's just an idea, though, and I know for sure making that work would be many times more laborious than I could guess.
Mod ships that have (VRI) variants are, with permission from their authors, included because I like the mods they're from, and they happen to be some of my favorite ships in the modiverse. It's a great way to introduce people to absolutely amazing mods like HMI and Tahlan Shipworks, in the incredibly low chance they aren't already using them. I plan to collaborate with more mod authors in the future, as well as lots more cross-mod compatibility to come, for any who are willing to cooperate. We also trimmed down the roster quite a bit this update, and got rid of a few redundant hulls or ones that felt out of place.
A couple other concerns.... It may be intended, but there's no base officials that allow for turning in AI cores; just thought I'd mention it in case it's an oversight. Also, the Karambit and planet Tally (and potentially one or two other ships, I can't remember) are missing descriptions; Eminence is missing the orbiting debris typically accompanying ruins; there are several colonies that don't spawn any base officials at all; and the Trident railgun isn't counted as either ballistic or energy for stat calculation (every other hybrid-mount weapon I've seen is considered one or the other for stat bonuses), meaning it cannot be affected by most or all range modifications. The Trident is also insanely quiet but that's not much of an issue really.
The issue with the AI cores is definitely an oversight, thank you! As for the Karambit, Tally, those are things we missed. Not sure why Eminence doesn't have ruins, or why colonies aren't spawning base managers, or why the prismatic is doing that. I'll look at those issues, as well as the trident. Thank you so much for all of your feedback! I really appreciate the thoroughness and detail.