development cycles and design programs

I think publishing games must be very similar to developing software
and in which case schedule over runs are pretty much expected unless
you take very firm control. I empathise and sympathise with AOG and CE
with this respect and they are not actually that late compared to
some real howlers in the computer games industry - Starfleet Academy
was nearly a year late (anyone tried this?).

So slack cut. 

I must admit I feel a bit jealous that some people already have the 
ESB for play testing and wonder how they got so lucky :-)

With regarding the soon to be available win32 ship designer and the
soon to be modified design rules, I'm sure Stuart has taken this into
account and designed his program to be flexible so that it can easily
be upgraded for the new fleet book. I'd rather have a design program
*now* than wait for the fleet book as it is going to probably be late
too,
due to the nature of its development (no crticism of GZG intended).

I think we should all be grateful that Stuart is putting in a
considerable
amount of personal time and not asking anything for it. I know I am.

sincerely
tim jones
--
The stars are matter, We're matter, But it doesn't matter.