The roadmap is just a distraction. Since waiting a year for 3.0 back in the dark days, not much has improved in terms of CIG's ability to deliver tech, new gameplay loops, and general content in a timely manner and according to their own projections. The next twist introduced after the 3.0 series to try and stabilize development and patch releases was "staggered development", where teams would alternate on 6 month cycles so that each patch would have a decent amount of well fleshed out features. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/staggered-development-faq-1/2344637 This strategy did not work and gameplay loops have continually slipped further and further back with tech driving the bulk of the delays. Recently, patches have been being combined, having more and more content cut, and slipping further and further back. Communications with aspirational goals are released by CIG and quickly fall by the wayside as dates slip even from these recent projections. Where will this end? We had a running joke a while back about the 3.18 patch series just continuing on into infinity (3.18.1, 3.18.2, etc..) but it seems like that has become the truth. What needs to be done to shore this up and correct the problems? Do there need to be production changes? Do more resources need to be shifted away from S42? If this were any other company, this would be unacceptable. It seems like the culture of "game development is hard", "everything is subject to change" , "the only constant in game development is change" etc. along with the lack of discrete goals and deadlines has made mediocrity acceptable here. Most of the entire rest of the games industry manages to meet their deadlines/release estimates within 10 years. Side note: The turbulent team responsible for the Lorville remake managed to get their deliverable out AHEAD of the estimated release date of 4.0 to whatever the 3.18.x/3.19 patch is. What are they doing that the rest of the company isn't? There has to be a better answer to these ongoing problems from both the community and CIG than to than 'just accept it'. If S42 is dragging the PU development down, there needs to be a better balance. If the current production methods aren't efficient, there need to be changes made to make it more efficient. Do we need longer or shorter patch cycles? There needs to be some introspection and improvements because despite the current culture, missing deadlines and your own goals is not acceptable and is emblematic of problems. This thread is for discussing the above topic until certain people come in and start fights and derail the thread on purpose so it gets locked like they do every other similar thread, so enjoy. If you're not one of the people I mentioned, I implore you to do your utmost to not respond to the people who will come and try to bait you into fighting and 'be civil' so the thread can stay up as long as possible. Thanks, https://robertsspaceindustries.com/the-pledge