I found a mistake in TechArea.txt:
Droids' racial area should be 24 not 6 they were never available to anyone.
That shows that I didn't attempt to test them in the game until now
Your questions
1)Shield regenerators should be useless without shields, but shouldn't hurt either. Now I doubt that they work in fighters at all.
2)R1s were supposed so large that they could be used in very few fighters. But I see your point. Maybe make them even larger or decrease their tonnage structure to 4.
3) My idea was to eventually add more stuff under the Droids research (listening ideas). That is why (once racial area is fixed) the tech are should be available to all SW races, but fighter R2s only to Rebels (Old/New Republic?)
4)Trade Federation should have many things under droids. Bettledroids, droid tanks, Droid fighters, (droid chairs? walking holoprojectors?) ect.
Cylons, if Battlestar Galactica races are ever added, should not have droids, that is a SW exclusive tech and I can't make them share a tech unless it's shared with everybody else, standard SE4, ST, B5.
5?)
The Force
You're right, Dark Storm and Force Lightning are described to skip shields and armor like standard Null-Space Projectors.
Perhaps they were "balanced" by "reducing" their damage type, and the description wasn't updated accoedingly. I'd have to ask Nick (Bearclaw)
I feel storms should be more "super-weapon" like, much more damage, and a virtually indestructible seeker, but of course larger and with longer reload time.
BTW there is no other weapon that uses the Skips All Shields damage type.