I do kinda wish the game would let me choose the weapon variant.
I have every weapon and it's variant fully modded and while the game generally picks the ideal variant, sometimes it picks weird sidegrades I don't like, like the opticor vandal over the base opticor; I would much rather take my normal opticor which can hit 600k+ per shot than the opticor vandal which is like half that damage output (at a slightly higher firerate which I care not for). The tenet ferrox (which has a similar relationship to the normal ferrox as the opticor and it's vandal) is also one that I've noticed will basically always take priority even though I'd prefer the original.