I read the thread title and the first post, and I don't think it's necessary to even skim through the rest of this thread.
If this isn't a joke, which it really looks like to anyone who's semi-regularly paid attention to Starfarer's development and has even the loosest grasp on average development cycles, especially for indie games with small teams, then shame on you. Shame on you for not knowing better.
The dev team's communication with the community has been impeccable. The rate of progress has been astounding. At no point since this website was accessible to the general public has this not been the case.
This has been so blatantly, objectively obvious that I can only conclude that the OP has fallen victim to a sort of confirmation bias, where they only care about updates and communication concerning one or two aspects of the game they find particularly interesting(campaign features?), while progress and information about all other areas are ignored and considered wasted time, despite their fundamental importance in the scope of the project as a whole, and in game design in general.
It just isn't an apple pie without the crust, even if all *you* care about is the filling, and Alex is making this one from scratch, so he must first invent the universe, you see?