So ... ... are there any other changes or advantages to using OBSE 18?
Nope. The reason I updated it was because OBSE 17 changed some byte-order stuff and OBSE 18 also changed some byte-order stuff. Basically I had to "move up" to OBSE 18 because OBSE 18 "broke" (or was it OBSE 17 Final...) this mod because it was "compiled" with a beta version of OBSE 17.
Did that solve any issues?
Also no.
Do issues still persist with this?
Define "issues." The mod works as intended. It is fully functional and doesn't crash the game.
Any future plans for this?
Unless I can find some nice tutorials on how Bethesda wrote their XML-based menus (which, unless I'm missing something, look like a mess) likely not much is planned. Future versions of Pluggy
may provide future functionality - basically if I can create my own menus instead of relying on Bethesda's menus there is more I can do. I haven't researched what Pluggy is really capable of in regards to menus, though.