Skeeletor

Can the factions spawn with the unique names but with vanilla ships and stations? One time on starting a new game my starting sector was controlled by MHM but all their ships blueprints, stations, and shipyard were just the vanilla ones. Similarly I've seen SeaFox spawn with just vanilla ships. Nova Corp and Brankor I've seen spawn with unique ships and stations so far.

Are the factions gated to certain distances from the core? About 50% of the time when I start a new game the only factions around are the vanilla ones, and the rest of the time it's Nova Corp. Sometimes I'll start out an ally to Nova Corp and enemy to another faction that is also Nova Corp. I haven't seen any other faction yet but I haven't played more than an hour into it any one game. The shipyard changes are nice and honestly something like that should be in the base game. Edit: With enough restarts I was able to find some of the other factions so it's just chance.