I recently had to recover a lot of data on my computer. My MesaModded game, unfortunately, was not backed up, so I had to start over. Since reinstalling both Darkstar One and the MesaMod and starting the game anew, the latter doesn't seem to be working properly. Sure, I still get the advanced afterburner and the 10 million (-1) credit starting balance, which are both nice. But it seems to be back to business as usual with the artifacts: 2 for the second upgrade, 3 for the third, etc. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled both the mod and the game and restarted multiple times. Is there some way I can fix this? Eventually getting a 10-10-10 ship was the reason I downloaded the mod to begin with.

This is what I got out of the mod this time around:
This is a little "wordy" but shows how my moded game is coming along. The following is based on the path upgrade I did this time and varies for different ways of upgrading.
The mod allows you to upgrade the ship much faster. Instead of 5 or 10 artifacts each upgrade it only takes 3 usually. (I assume that since upgrades come faster that is the reason why one can get to level 10 before all 100 artifacts are collected ?) I have a level 14 ship half-way through the map with 4 turrets and 4 front weapons and ship agility maxed out at 130%. Thus I played the game normally but the ship became virtually indestructible very quick, especially where I really needed it.
The ship is so powerful as a matter of fact I can enter a pirate system, come to a complete stop and shoot all the waves of pirates down just using the turrets and front weapons. I just use it as a stationary gun platform.
One time, I think, I was able to upgrade fast, but I could not find the required upgraded equipment , energy, and weapon systems at that point in the game and I got pounded so bad I had to quit. Because the pirates and mercs matched my ships level - but they had the weaps and equipment to back it up. I didn't.
Anyway, this is what I found out. Also, I could not get through the Eona canyon shootout because when I got to the generators I could not destroy them no matter what I did. I simply reverted back to the normal game mode (got out of the mod) and played through and was able to take out the generators. Maybe that was just a problem with my particular setup, I don't know. Then went back to the moded game and continued on.
The only way I saw you could get level 10 weaps is that all upgrades had to be applied to the wings and Hull. Let me know if I am wrong on that. Also, even though the ships energy is not maxed out it still runs very hot due to the mod. The engines are at level 0. I am still running with 2 equipment slots, but since I need the ore harvester for one of the side missions I need to do another one I guess. I am not sure how the remaining upgrades finally work with the mod as I am finished with this play through yet.
I have collected 33 artifacts so far (the wings are at level 6, and hull is at level 8). Energy/Weapons/Equipment is at class 6. The ship can be upgraded overall quite a bit more I think. Like I said, I am not done yet.
I have a list of possible systems that have level 10 weapons. I don't know if the list is true or not. Also, I have not seen level 9 weapons either. So, I don't know what that is about. Maybe my ships wings and hull need to be at level 9 or 10 before the weapons appear in the game.
Thus the mod makes the game way to easy. Therefore I played through it normally the first time and the play wasn't to bad (barring some issues along the way) due to the way I finally upgraded the ship each time. I did use a Flak work-around temporarily however.