Great mod, I'm really enjoying this faction. I like that they fight a bit different from any other faction.
At first I thought they were completely OP, but after playing against them for a bit I realized two things:
1) The AI doesn't know how to counter them properly really with a random ship.
2) Their hulls are very weak so as soon as you build up their flux to intolerable levels they will fall quick.
3) Can't letup the attack, if you back-off (which the AI does a lot) they will regenerate and it's back to square one. Missile barrages can work really well here.
If you use the blackrock mod, the Desdinova is a great Shadow Order killer