I love the depth and attention to detail you have achieved and you have obviously put a lot of effort into this mod. I will be following its development closely, especially if better integration with NPC factions is somehow possible.
My only gripe is that you have changed the vanilla resources. Having played the game for the best part of 5.5 years, this change is off-putting. Not that I know off by heart what each of the various resources (ores and shards) are used for, I wonder why you might have gone down this route? Add new ones yes but change the existing ones I find hard to come to terms with. Maybe that is just me but maybe not?
The gas giants are awesome and being able to passively collect materials from these and on the other planets is great.
Personally, only the change in the vanilla resources has prompted me to only give this four stars but I will be interested to see where this mod goes and maybe try to get my head around the more radical (IMHO) changes.