A heartfelt message to CIG: As a middle aged “space dad” with disposable income, I’m pretty sure I make up the gaussian mean of what your target audience is, at least when it comes to keeping the lights on. I sat down a few months ago with the goal of getting into a good space sim. I did my homework and avoided the hyperbolic rhetoric around most of the contenders toward narrowing things down. I played NMS for quite a while before but was tired of the procedurally generated stuff and cartoony graphics. I started playing ED and SC at the same time, to see which would “hook” me best. SC won by a long shot. I loved the detail, the mix of space and ground play, and of course, the ability to go from bed to space with every aspect in between as a playable part of the game. I liked the ethos, the player base, the community. Once I was a few months in I decided that I was comfortable with supporting the project a bit more, and I pledged a C1 and also got my 13 yo son his own account. Though my son was utterly uninterested after playing for a few hours (let that be a tell tale of what’s to come in the generational divide - food for thought) but I kept chugging. Happily exploring every facet of the game and helping new players and enjoying the grind. As a generation 1 video gamer, I’ve never only played one game at a time, until SC. Got myself a shiny new monitor and a set of VKB gladiators and I was blissfully occupied. I feel I had a good mindset and one that was patient, forgiving, and understanding of the project and the hard work put into it. There are, as I see it, two general types of SC players: the hard and fast adrenaline craving dogfighters who relish the FPS stuff, spend a lot of time with orgs and friends, and love the loot and thrill of things all things piracy. Then you have the relaxed solo players who generally don’t do much of the FPS or dogfighting but like to take it slow, enjoy just flying around in space, taking lots of screenshots and grinding on mining or salvage just because it’s relaxing. That’s me. I started before MMs and got to experience both the thrill of the flight model before and the sludge of it after. That said, and as a “relaxed” player, I was willing to deal with it - not my lane so to speak, but I sympathized with those of the adrenaline varietal. I was happy with the recent patches and watched as the gameplay got better, the bugs decreased, and things were surprisingly smooth. I even played on the PTU for the first time in anticipation of the cargo patch - a welcome addition to us “relaxed” players who tend not to care about “time sinks” so much. I spent a week or so in my Vulture and Prospector on the grind to make 12m to buy an MSR in-game, as I’d decided that was going to be my new ship for the cargo patch - had all the stuff I liked. Played in the PTU and was astounded at how, in just a few weeks it went from a buggy mess to one of the smoothest running patches yet for SC just before launch to live. I decided that if this went well, I would take the next step and pledge the MSR. Then came live… Look maybe I don’t understand now coding works and how deploying a patch to live can unravel just about every base code function but seriously…?! All the same bugs again plus all the new ones. The “Cargo Empire!!” patch that had no functioning cargo missions. Trapped at August Dunlow for two days (over a holiday weekend no less) unable to reach my hangar or call ships - ferried to Seraphim just to find that my beloved MSR had been stolen in the patch update and my pisces was not able to be claimed or delivered. And then came the skybox. Look I’m running out of wind here and I won’t labor over this but the skybox change put me over the edge. I’m a very patient person - you have to be to play SC :wink: But I really can’t tolerate poor decision making and being tone deaf to your backers. You brought a sledge hammer down on the “hard and fast” players with MM, crippling their experience and sending them away. You’ve now done precisely the same with the “relaxed” players like me in changing the skybox. No one wanted this, there wasn’t a problem, and I’m shocked that this was even deployed. I’m not patient enough to put up with that and too selfish to now be the target of the sledge - a crippling change to the ethos and experience of the game for me. So my wallet is now closed. No MSR pledge and not a dime more from me. I’m frustrated and so are a great number of others. If a backer like me does a 180 after months of dedicated and enjoyable play, please take the time to reconsider your current model and behavior. I wish all of the best for SC and love the project, but too much time is being spent on new ships, new features, new revenue. I worry that the plan is to keep the alpha in alpha indefinitely because a release means less revenue. After all, and to extend an analogy from my field, there’s much more money to be made in treating disease than in curing it. One last thought. As an avid astronomer and accomplished astrophotographer, I’ll share one small nugget, and an image. One of the first lessons we learn in processing long exposure deep space images is… there’s no green in space (okay, exceedingly little). It's 98% hydrogen out there and that's red when it's hot. And with all the naked eye squinting you can muster, you’re not going to see any galaxies either. The only thing visible would be the core of the Andromeda Galaxy - the farthest thing the human eye can see, at 2.5mly distant. Go for accuracy or not, that’s a subjective choice, but you picked the wrong color to block out the space in your…space game. I’m truly Perplexed.