Some of you may remember that around the time of the release of version .19 (April to be precise), there was a bit of an uproar over potential DLC/expansions. The guys at Squad quickly cleared up the confusion, and all was forgiven. Not much else has even been said about post-release content since it is so far down the road. Everyone moved on with their lives and eagerly began looking forward to the next release, version .20. At this point, version .20 was still planned to be the update that would lay the groundwork for the implementation of resources collection and utilization. Screenshots were released of UI's showing how much of a given resource was on a body. We even had the resource chart visualizing what all resources would be in the game, how they would interact, etc. I won't re-post it here since the devs have said that so much about resources has changed since that chart was released as to make it nearly irrelevant. Suffice it to say, the community was pretty pumped about finally getting one of the most requested features for KSP. Incidentally, around the same time that the clarification was made on DLC, the decision was made public that resources would not be in version .20. The devs had decided to shift their focus to implementing career mode in order to avoid a situation like Minecraft where, for a long time, the dev team for that game endlessly added features to the sandbox without ever getting closer to a finished product or even having an idea of what a finished product would look like. I believe that releasing KSP on Steam also put some pressure on Squad to have a clear end in sight and work aggressively towards finishing the game. I have a working hypothesis that these two events (the discussion about DLC and the decision to postpone resources indefinitely) are directly related. I can't find specific posts to cite, but I distinctly remember one of the reasons given for cutting resources from the next few updates was to focus on the essential aspects of what they thought the game should be about, or something along those lines. I'm paraphrasing because, again, [citation needed]. I have a feeling that somewhere along the way, it was decided that mining planets for resources should not and would not be one of these core features, and that the entire concept would be put on hold until after the game was released. I am fine with this decision, if indeed it has been made. I am curious, however, to know what you all think about it. Am I wrong completely, and seeing connections where there are none? What possibly could have prompted the discussion of DLC if indeed some had not been seriously talked about among the devs? Was the decision to focus on career mode over resources a mistake, in your opinion? Would you be disappointed if resources were not part of the initial release? Are resources an integral part of the game that need to be implemented before version 1.0? Any other comments you have on the subject are appreciated.
