Understanding the frustration a lot of people are feeling about the long gap between releases, I'd recommend going to Alex's profile, and looking at his most recent posts. The amount of work he does here on the forums is staggering. You often get a good look into how the long periods of playtesting help improve the game through various bug reports and fixes, and design changes coming from community suggestions. I know it always leaves me impressed and feeling a lot better about the wait, because you can see the changes happening incrementally. It also gives me a great deal of respect for a lot of my peers in this community, when they give Alex really good bug reports that make a better game for me, and the modders who take the game in different directions, adding features and designing ships in ways Alex doesn't have the time or inclination to.