This is something that I scratch my head on and find it a bit frustrating in convos about the issues and concerns about SC. If someone comments on the game having unplayable issues or people bitching major parts of the game aren't close to being released, we get told "The games not out yet.. you need to wait until it's released before passing judgement". and if people complain or comment concerns about the game not being out it's "the game IS out.. you can play right now (just pay no attention to the issues, and lack of features like proper missions, though I conceed I've heard of there being some missions in the game even if they are buggy, and story lines). Which is it?
Because you fail to put the posts into context. The context of people complaining about something that is released is that it is Alpha. The context to people who say there is no game, is that there is a game, it is in Alpha. The parts that exist are all proof of concepts and work in progresses to test out play quality. The Alpha builds we get access to are also in fact weeks if not months behind the current game builds that CIG is using (case and point, CIG demo'ed their 3.0 back in August). We get "stable" builds. I seriously mean that. Alpha builds typically crash left and right... you push a button, or trigger an event, or some combination of context menus, etc., and crash... We get a fairly well polished Alpha build, but as a result, it means that someone looked over the serious crash bugs and fixed most of them before releasing.
The longest, hardest part of development is getting the engine in place. The reason they needed multiple passes on original ships is because they needed to keep up with the engine. Typically most game development studios would not spend a lot of time on asset creation until the engine is done (making due to basic models to test out functionality).
I thought 2.6 was delayed until next year, as per the articles I've read on it. That not the case?
2.6 was almost always coming out this year. It was 3.0 which was questionable. While back in the summer, they were trying to have 3.0 out this year, to most people following the game, we had a feeling it was not realistic. While CIG has been developing on the 3.0 branch since before they made the announcement, it all comes down to fixing most major crash bugs and memory leaks before a release is made. And since it took until now for 2.6 to get stable enough for release, they obviously are not going to abandon that work. The point of 2.6 is to get play and run data from the large amount of people with "alpha" access, to find most of the bugs in the features introduced. The same will happen with "3.0". I have a feeling that "3.x" will be the last of the "alpha" releases, as 3.0 introduces most of the remaining engine capabilities needed for the entire game (landing on planets/ground base generation/planetary animal life/planetary weather among other things... again all demo'ed earlier this year, just not in release state to thousands of players who are not software developers or professional game testers and thus have no idea how to deal with true "alpha" content). At which point the "beta" releases will begin. The purpose of "beta" releases is to find as many bugs and code/performance optimizations as possible. There will be new "content" (new maps/planets/ships, etc.,) but no major new "features" (i.e. game engine changes). It is almost always just polish, some balancing, and lots of optimizations.