I think you both missed my main point, let's discuss a bit further..
I agree, lot's of games these days (early access / or even finished AAA titles - get rushed out, sometimes)
That's a different business as your talking about these companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a title. it some cases the future of that company can rest on a single titles revenue at launch.
Some of these companies are extremely large - It's a business, so sometimes they need to release a bit early then patch it after.
They are employing people with families and mortgages, so the company needs a return at some point. What I'm trying to say here is that I get why this happens, despite how much I hate it.
It sucks when a released title has loads of bugs / glitches, I'd never be an advocate of rushing a title out, in Star Sector's case, this is anything but rushed.
I get the polishing, I do..
*Edit* Look at Mount Blade 2 for example - Bit of a disaster in terms of initial impressions due to bugs / performance issues (I was extremely disappointed after 8 years of dev)
*But* - They made a good attempt at getting key features out first such as the tutorials and campaigns and custom battles, the right strategy just a poor execution as they clearly lacked the QA / balancing / polishing discussed here.
Realistically in an ideal world you want both, not just one or the other.
I'm a commercial software engineer myself, quality is important as code rots over time and features get harder to implement if the code base isn't maintained to a quality level following good SOLID principles..
I get it, I do..
With regards to the first reply, it's not about *first impressions* we're ten years in first impressions have been and gone, surely?
When the game becomes 1.0 and is released fully (on Steam or not, I've no idea what Alexs' plans are with that) - then your impressions and initial reviews are going to matter.
I wasn't suggesting releasing early before final balancing and tweaks are completed, obviously that's a bad idea!
However..
There's also a thing called MVP (minimum viable product) and having a focused release cycle on getting key features and functionality out first, makes a lot of sense.
I've played multiple sessions on vanilla, I've not noticed any glaring bugs, horrible glitches or UI issues or major balancing issues.
In it's current form I find the game extremely decent, let's not talk about first impressions as:
Number one, the game's had players playing it for ten years or so.
Number two, it's well polished and I doubt a single player has a bad thing to say about the game (especially the lucky few who are experiencing it for the first time)
I've been aware of Alex working on 'core' features for a while now, but please let's not wait another ten years till 1.0 because we are obsessed about colouring in asteroids and the like..