Excellent points! Just want to iterate, I’m not a mega fan or anything close. Just saw this thread was a “SC scam” circle-jerk of sorts, and wanted to provide some counter-info from someone who has played, and in the past did a fair amount of reading and watching their more technical posts.

When I say mechanics from scratch, I mean there is no industry standard they can copy, ex: Like true zero 0g in space piloting, with 0 aerodynamics, then flying down to a planet where those start to exist. They had a blog post about having to overcome that.

As far as the economy goes, years ago they had a more technical video where their top guy doing the (architecture, engineering?) was explaining and showing live examples of a very basic version working. Blew my mind and made me appreciate their goal.

Engine swap was basically an upgrade they realized they would need for the scope of the game. IIRC, they went from CryEngine to Lumberyard, which is a custom CryEngine reworked to be an excellent match specifically for Amazon’s AWS from what I can tell.

I’m just using the word galaxy from a sci-fi point of view. Not a literal galaxy size with an unfathomable amount of stars, planets, etc.

4 years ago the default answer for why it’s taking so long is always they have to create multiple tools and programs to be able to create what they want at the scale they want. Like not every planet can be hand crafted, they need to create a program that is able to create 100s of planets and have them be unique, and fast.

I personally view all their promises and hype from the view of coming from a potential con-man, whose vision is everything I’d ever want in what is IMO, going to be a big MMO. And I’m personally pleasently surprised with what they’ve created so far, including looks into the tools they’re making. As of 4 years ago when I last looked.

I feel like trying to say that they are objectively a scam is dishonest. If someone is curious, check it out on Twitch, go through their blogs and YouTubes of them showing off their work in progress tools. Decide if you wanna risk $40 or not. Which I’d argue is a fair amount considering how much content there is now, that I’ve enjoyed in the past. It’s not an excuse, but Early Access gaves have launched with far less, and much less stable or optimized.