I really like this ship, and the new pics of the deco and figures seals the deal for me. The $30 price seems very fair, and if the R5 unit in the ship was removable, I'd be planning to buy two of these nice ships.
I hear you about the droid slot. It's definitely a curious situation about that, but explainable.
I have a vintage Y-Wing. The droid slot works, but only with the vintage R2-D2 and R5-D4. But I got clever and decided to try to make a modern R2 unit fit. I had custom painted some R2's from POTF2, and decided I wanted to get one of them into this Y-Wing. But the legs/feet are just a little too wide to fit in the vintage droid slot. So I shaved them down along the sides until finally it would squeeze into the Y-Wing. Let me tell you, it's a tight fit!
So what are the practical solutions? Hasbro would have to do one of two things to make a functional Y-Wing droid slot happen:
1) Retool the vintage vehicle molds. It's just not designed for a modern era astro droid figure. This would be the ideal solution but also the most expensive.
2) Come up with an R2 unit that is designed specifically to mate with the vintage size droid slot. It's doable but would require a new basic figure tool.