You get what you pay for~
Which is a pretty damn good deal for what you get despite all its problems.
+1. He made it for himself and released it because he knew that there would be people who were interested in it. He doesn't care about the playerbase because he has no reason to. This is essentially the equivalent to someone writing a story that they want to read and posting it online, where it accumulates a modest fanbase. The author has no obligation to anyone, as they did it for their own pleasure, released it for free, and don't particularly care if anyone reads it. Complaints might be reasonable if he charged people for the game, or if he was actually creating it for other people, but neither of those things are true.
Then you're never going to be playing it, as he has already outright stated that he doesn't care if people can't or won't play it for one reason or another.
We already know that no further adjustments are going to be added by Steve, so frankly people either need to stop bitching about someone not wanting to change a game which has been explicitly described as a project intended for personal entertainment and leave
If its only for his personal entertainment why should anyone else play it ?Let him run his own imaginary world.Why would you release a game if you don't care about the playerbase ?
We play it because we enjoy it as it is, despite (or occasionally because of) the flaws. In essence, Aurora
is his own imaginary world, which some other people happened to take interest in. See the above example I provided. I don't see why it is so difficult to understand the concept of an individual creating for their own enjoyment, rather than the enjoyment of others.
Regarding population on new colonies: That is why my terraforming fleets full fix up worlds before I colonize them, as it allows me to just dump a few loads of colonists and ignore them unless they have ruins or resources. Actually, I tend to set up a 'useless' population world very early on, as a source of future colonists, so I can avoid drawing them from my industrial workforce on Earth.
Also, new game, just jumped into Alpha Centauri in a new game, to find this:
+ 0.39 cost (needs a tiny bit of CO2 removed)
+ 0.64 cost (same as above)
+ 2.00 cost (needs 0.1atm of O2)
+ 3.98 cost (needs 0.09atm of O2, enough GHG to raise the temp by around 87.6 degrees C [no ice means no boost from melting])
+ 4.07 cost (long term; needs 0.1atm of O2 and more than 100 degrees worth of AGHG. Thankfully, just 0.02g above the lower limit)
+ 7.35 cost (long term, suck out methane and replace with O2 + a crapload of GHG to raise the temp; also, a moon, for more cool factor)
+ 7.58 cost (long term, same as above, except with helium instead of methane)
So yeah, pretty damn nice, assuming I get a decent load of minerals. Here's hoping there aren't any NPRs or Precursors. Actually, Tau Ceti's A component also had a 0.94 cost world that just needed a bit of AGHG.
Carronades can also do some massive damage at JP defense, as they can get close range and use their massive firepower more easily.
It seems like ships with a larger jump radius would screw this over, as carronades are very short ranged and IIRC jump sickness doesn't affect engines. Assuming NPRs actually bother increasing jump radius. Jump
gates, on the other hand, would be absolutely brutal to attackers who ran into something like this.