I think the current shitstorm concerning the 600i (and other ships in the past) can be boiled down to a single mistake which could easily be avoided, and I'm here to talk about that. Part the First In which the author talks about what presumably went wrong with the 600i - Having Concept Sales before the Concept Phase is actually finished - This is basically what got the ball rolling into the china store. Everything that went wrong can be traced back to this. Bear with me. roar Once upon a time, CIG set out to "make a competitor to the Constellation". So they got right on that, and also set a date for the Concept Sale. So far, so good. Then... ominous music... JUMP SCARE! Right around the time of the scheduled Concept Sale, CIG noticed they didn't quite get the size dimensions right, and the ship had to actually be 50% bigger for the interiors to work - and at this point, a lot of work had been put into the concept sale, like artwork, the brochure and the commercial. (You can tell all the interiors look smaller in the concept sale art if you compare them.) "Well, f***.", thought the ship team. Conflicting information, general confusion, lack of communication, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria. "Increasing the size by 50% changes literally EVERYTHING about the ship!", a dev exclaimed with horror in her eyes. (You thought it was a guy, didn't you, you misogynist pig.) BUT the Concept Sale was an immovable object, so there was no turning back at this point, and the clusterf*** train was on its way, choo-choo. So they increased the size from 60m to 90m - without adjusting components or weaponry. This also led to a ship too big and massive to be fast and nimble. The modular section was moved from the rear to the middle - which meant stilt-like landing gear was then required to accommod.. accomad... make the elevator work. There was no actual room in the chassis to hide the guns and still make them gimbalable (fun word, say it out loud!), so they had to tack them on. Suddenly, the loadout, aimed at being able to blast a path through enemies in front and then speed away laughing, was pointless due to the inherent lack of speed. The ship was also too big to be a competitor to the Connie now - which was the MISSION STATEMENT. It was a cluster of f***s indeed - but they built it anyway, trying to shoehorn promised features and aesthetics into a ship that had mutated into something completely different, and the Symphony in Motion started to sound more like the tour bus rolled off a bridge with the musicians trying to keep playing while screaming in terror. All this can be tracked back to the Concept Sale being held way before the Concept Phase was finished, and the ship being advertised as something it couldn't really be, making the developer's task literally impossible, and there was much lamentation throughout the CIG kingdom. Part the Second In which the author makes suggestions as to how similar conundrums can be avoided henceforth This is pretty much a no-brainer and doesn't come as much of a surprise: Do Concept Sales when the Concept Phase is over Imagine, if you will, a world in which CIG had NOT held the Concept Sale when they did. They would have noticed the problem with the wrong dimensions and adjusted it, probably either by making changes to the interior so it could still be a 60m ship and the 600i they set out to create, OR they would have turned this bigger design into the 700i, for later, and started anew on the 600i concept with the original "Connie competitor" Mission Statement. They would have had the time to actually FULLY DESIGN the ship without having to stick to information that was given to the backers halfway through, or artwork, or commercials, or unnecessary pressure and limitations. We, the backers, would have never found out what went on behind the scenes. We'd have been presented a (or even TWO) well thought-through, close to perfectly designed Origin ship(s), and the end result would have been infinitely closer to the concept presented in the sale, and everyone would have pooped rainbows. "Everything is subject to change", CIG keeps insisting. Literally EVERYTHING - except for the date of Concept Sales. Those are set in stone. Why not make THOSE subject to change and thereby avoid lots of changes to everything ELSE and the shitstorms that usually follow in their wake? So, you see, unless I'm completely off on what happened, this is the simple solution that would save both CIG and us backers a mountain of trouble: DO NOT HOLD CONCEPT SALES UNTIL THE CONCEPT PHASE IS OVER Thank you. bows ... ... ... Please clap. EDIT: Apparently, some people seem to think I'm whining in this thread or something. I'm not. I mean, in general, yeah, but not in this thread. The 600i ship has probably sailed. This is about a general problem that could be avoided in the future.