Research stations can appear in sectors with Technology or Military economies,
there's probably one around but it's sometimes easy to miss - like turret factories or smuggler outposts.

Weapons will get a rebalance, but that's coming with 3.0 which will be a separate mod, not an update.

About drop rates - in theory every sector has its own drop table, including rarity.
Farming same sectors should drop roughly same stuff, while moving around to different areas should give best variety of stuff.
From what I've seen on streams and my own games - zappers tend to be most common, so RNG works differently for each game and area ( which was intended ).

About weapon balance, it kind of depends on playstyle, difficulty - and other mods used.
Faction packs boost difficulty a lot, and that's where EMP weapons shine, combined with anything that can crit.

Plasma turrets start to outperform MGs at M4, in range and damage - but in general, are just universal.
RBEs usually take down enemy ship in one charged shot, even if their DPS seems weak.

Overall, its best to pick weapons around same M class as your ship,
and it's easy to filter out lower class turrets of any type if you want to trash them.

Btw. shops are usually a better source of turrets than salvage/drops. Salvaging primarily gives materials for crafting turrets.

I have a ship with 4 stacked RBE;s and it has never taken down a ship wtih one hit O__o I am using many faction packs.

Ive sent my scout all over the place and even manually changed zone move orders with them ive gotten 1/10th the map revealed and have yet to find a research station - Ive used the search function because well that is what it is for.

Smuggler base I just found my first one near the core and turret factories are like everywhere similar to fighter factories a total non issue there on my seed. At this point im about ready to just found my own research station lol.

I did notice that sectors have individual tables as ive let a few flotillas farm rats while working on other stuff in sector and repeatedly got the same stuff - still coax drop rates are banannas on my seed which is a shame because you dont really need many on a per ship basis.

Ive started breaking all the trash down into parts at scrapyards and crafting the turrets I want and that has been fun. Also loving bomber fighters.

Is there a trick to getting AI to use coax less....chaotically? Ive used jousting dodge tanks on the M2 level with some success they just cant hit anything even an M7 but that certainly doesn't stop them from shooting their coax's even when there are no enemies in front of them....lost a lotta faction rep taht way with them hitting stations.

Bigger ships seem to have less trouble with the coax's so long as you use the focus fire attack but that erases virtually all mobility since they'll just sit there and fire although my M4 destroyer squadrons have zero issue with this even against a bunch of M6's and M7's - honestly outside of specialized support/civy roles ive not had use for anything bigger than M4 yet and im almost to the core. the 200-400k hull & shields you can easily achieve without really losing any DPS is crazy when you pair it with hull counters.

Speaking of support - im in love with engineering ships. They may not outheal enemy dps even with 20 reconstruction turrets but they are great for campaigns against hostile factions and the mobile shipyard/subsystem editing is far and away the coolest.

Anyways thats enough random feedback you didnt ask for im loving hte mod pack so far even if it runs like garbage after 20-40 minutes forcing me to restart my game often. Looking forward to 3.0!