I've got a similar idea, perhaps the SLV-3R might 'accidentally' run into a few RSI ships.(As of right now, It's the RSF, and the only ships released aren't that great, but I'm working on the better ships of the fleet.) In fact, the RSI has purchased several KR-P advanced escape pods.

That is very possible. There's always room for more content in SLV-3Rs' universe.
I love the lore you've created for your builds!
Would need to know a bit more about about your people so I could figure out how to introduce them into the story...
For instance are they a human faction or an alien race? What kind of planet do they live on? Did they originate there / do they also live on other worlds?

I'm currently working on a short story to explain all that...one thing though...

I like mods

As in, about 5-10 per build

However, it could be that my faction(which are definitely human) had discovered and reverse-engineered alien technolgy

I was thinking of using some of the modded planets on the workshop as the planets comprising the Araluen system. Basically, I want to transfer the books Ranger's apprentice to space.

Ok cool. I'll look forward to seeing what you write.

Lots of mods could be a problem for me, as my internet is really slow & they take an age to load.
To showcase any of your builds properly in the story I'd need to do a lot of flitting in & out of different worlds to take screenshots of them in fitting situations.
2 or 3 of the more commonly used mods I could probably handle without too much waiting around but 10 would be pushing the limits of how much time I can spend on the project.

Also, as there are several people now getting involved, if I subbed to every mod every one of them used in their builds I'd end up subscribed to half a million mods - and keeping track of which mods went with which builds would quickly become impossible.

For your side of things it wouldn't matter how many mods your builds used... and I'm fine with showcasing modded stuff - it's not that at all... but for anything I need to actually load into a world myself, I really need a vanilla version of it - or as close to vanilla as possible.

Doesn't have to be a complete re-build or anything. I'd only be taking shots of the exterior, so it wouldn't matter if you just took an existing build, ripped everything out & published it separately as "hull only". You could publish the vanilla version privately if you didn't want it to appear on the public workshop.

And there'd be no need to do the same for every one of your builds. Just pick your favourite that you'd like featured & we'll go from there.
It wont be possible for me to feature ever build by every author anyway. The idea is just to share the exposure around a bit & get people looking at the work of others.

Modded planets are something I'll be looking at in the future for this project anyway & there's not much getting around needing to load those - but I can use the same planets in lots of different "episodes" & will only ever need to load them in one world, so they aren't so much of a problem.
Let me know which planets you choose for your backstory & I'll sub to them.

Hope that doesn't throw a spanner in the works for you too much.

NAh, not at all

the most important ones would be the exterior, I used armor ramps inn my latest build, so..but the rest of the mods aren't that important, they just provide extra power. Oh, and the shields. I could replace the repulsorlift mod with internal thrusters, providing you don't mind engine damage being off

Ah good.
Best thing would be to just pick a build you'd most like featured & link me and we'll go from there.

Ok. It'll take me a bit, but I'll work on finishing it. How soon do you need it?

Engine damage wont be a problem. I can work with that. All it has to do is sit there & pose for screenshots. Some might show thrusters firing, so as long as it can do that it wont matter if innertial dampeners cause damage. I can just past in a fresh copy for the next shot.

There's no schedule for anything - no time constraints whatsoever, so work on it at your leisure / take as long as you want. I can fit it into the story at pretty much any point, since each episode will be its own self-contained story.

Ok. I had an idea for the story to fit into yours...might take a few days to get on paper though

No hurry. Take your time & above all have fun doing it - fun is the name of the game here!