To that whole additional spaceship discussion, and with respect to some of Koromacs statements, and Errors’, i only gotta say small wall of text which you can skip completely.
TLDR; I don’t think, they are holding back just like that. And I can subscribe to: “I don’t care about more custom ships at this moment”
Designing additional resources might also be dependant on how designers are available. Usually, stuff like 3d design in games is made by professionals, who devote a lot of time into this. They do not just design for one game, but for multiple. You are usually very lucky as a company, to get a good designer working on a project for a prolongued time, where you can create a batch of designs over a long period. If you value quality over cheap production, you try to do a lot at once done.
It’s a job. You have to eat. You are not becoming a millionaire over night, and designers do not grow on trees, same goes for decent programmers who can design a whole engine. You can hire designers to do similar quality on a smaller scale, but just because you get a rembrandt, it doesn’t mean the master did it. Adding new designs also needs a designer to “get back into the project”, it needs creativity, etc. - this is really just normal, even for the highest of high end products in the entertainment business.
Same goes again for gamedesigners. Extending an existing project always needs a bit more energy, than doing the rough first sketch. I mean come on, how many games are out there, which come out with a nice alpha, where you have the feeling, it only needs a bit more work and its perfect, and then it dies off, because the management underestimated the workload, the changes of employment and personalities involved.
So while maybe the idea of building your own ships was tossed around from the start, maybe even part of the whole game design idea, it was certainly not the same game to be integrated into, after years of development, adjustment and balancing.
I can also pretty much say, if the Dreadnoughts were also in the design process, which probably are more work than a few small meshes for spaceships, I would hardly believe, all the additional ships were “finished and lying around”.
There is only a miniscule amount of players who can build their custom ships, but do not do so. I myself hate to grind by making the same missions over and over again, so I have still a lot to go until I can fly a custom built ship. I hardly think, people are just tossing alien monocrystals around out of boredom, or can be blamed for short sightedness.
Grind has become much better, but is still a factor; and I think still a major factor, that only dedicated people who only play the game to gather resources, are more prevalent, than players, who actually play the game for its pvp content. This can be felt across the whole population. But I still think, the playerbase is alive and well overall, while of course, growth rate, player retain factor, etc. could be improved, but hardly only by adding more “endgame goodies” for some uber hardcore players who are bored about the content, because they started to play in early alpha (and already left, so not talking about anyone here). Of course, it’s also important, but by far not the most important!
I do agree with koromac, that painting dlc ships, etc. would be nice; I find enhancements in existing stuff always nice; makes you want to revisit parts of the game, you do not utilize anymore, or try out a ship you haven’t flown a long time. The same goes for adding modules, or enhancing the meta.
Quick question on 1.0.10 tho, what were the changes in that? I am not sure I can differentiate it from 1.0.9 changenotes. Maybe I am blind?