Thermonuclear take time:
Getting excited (or worse, "hyped") over the game to come in the distant future (hypothetical complete Starsector) instead of the game we already have (Starsector 0.9.1) or the not-yet-out game with visible progress on it (Starsector 0.95a as indicated by the blog posts and patch notes) contributes to the incentives that get you something like Anthem. Or Star Citizen.
More generally: For the purposes of what's beneficial for the customer, excitement is not in itself good (nor bad) and building it should not be a goal.
In general agreement, though I don't so much mind excitement for the next release! But yeah, it's so easy to get excited about something that doesn't exist yet, because one can imagine it as exactly the thing they want. And then of course everyone excited is imagining something quite different from each other, and reality is bound to be a disappointment for many people since - no matter how good! - it can never hope match *all* of those expectations. Going back to "next release" stuff, there's some danger of a let-down there too, of course, but there are enough specifics about it (from the blog post and patch notes) that it's at least not as fraught as it would be without that.
I see the major relevant risks of the long development cycle as:
- Alex gets tired of the project and drops out
... #1 doesn't look like it either (sure hope not!), but I can't tell from the outside.
(Yeah, definitely not! I mean, I suppose I'd be expected to say that regardless? But, yeah, I'm excited to be working on Starsector! It's like, the things we're finally doing now is things I've wanted to do for literally 10+ years, and they're finally here, or almost here.)
Of course, the most direct way to speed up the dev cycle – crunching – is going to be directly counterproductive for #1. Hiring a new dev with Sseth money imposes significant onboarding costs at this late stage, although this could be mitigated if the person was already familiar with the game's innards.
(Alex: Have you ever contemplated contracting one of the major modders here to help you and/or David with development? I can list a few names (not including me though, I'd turn down any offer that was made) who I think would be available and good at it. There's another notable space indie game out now (AI War II) where circumstances led to the dev relying heavily on two volunteers-turned-contractors to get the current release out, so I was wondering if this model might be worth considering elsewhere.)
(Yeah, I've considered that! Though without specifics as to who. That would likely be easier than brining in someone new entirely. But, yeah, as you say, at this late stage, I'm not so sure that makes sense anyway. David's been able to do more on Starsector recently, btw, which I'm super excited about! Just a week ago, he wrapped up implementing one of the major story missions. It was very cool to see it in-game and experience it more as a player, since I didn't know all the ins and outs going in...)
One thing that would be kind of awesome for these large updates, is if you could somehow get the mod relevant data on the patch change to the modders ahead of time, so they can be working on updating their mods to the new patch when it releases, rather than fans of their mods having to wait for x# of days after the new patch before their mods are updating. (Probably not realistic/feasible I admit, but a gal can dream!
)
That's why the "Modding" section of the patch notes tends to be pretty detailed and more meticulously kept! (Though that's missing some things too, I'm sure, but they ought to be more minor.) And, IIRC, I've been publishing the updated API javadoc some time ahead of the release the last couple of times. Actually getting a build into modder hands early, though, I don't think is practical. And besides, modders operate on their own schedule; it doesn't seem reasonable to expect them to do that work synced up to a release, and, frankly, I'm also glad to get some pure-vanilla feedback for a while after the release, too, so that also works out!
How well would this work?
Spend story point to do a convoy raid. ...
Hmm - details aside, "spend a story point to get to attack and loot some civilian ships in an enemy fleet" sounds like it could be very fun. ... let me note this down; not sure if I'll get to it or not, but just in general, I like the idea itself.