I salute you, but you're far from the only one that has been pointing out for years that the games industry's business model is a gold-lined pathway up to the edge of a very steep cliff.  At least a lot of developers have gone Indie successfully now, having created other good online business models for selling their games.  Bigger and more expensive isn't necessarily better; in many cases, it just makes for a bloated, half-finished, thoroughly unimaginative product that sinks like a 1956 Studebaker.

I picked up LoP when it was released. It's a complete lemon. And not one with which you can squeeze some lemonade. It's broken. The UI is terrible. The key mapping is simply broken. The campaign/tutorial is a travesty. Combat is a waste of time. Graphics are junk. Don't buy it.

Let me go into detail:

It's Broken: Bugs are abundant and game-breaking. In my first three attempts, the game crashed twice before turn 20. I had to exit the game on my third attempt when the combat round refused to end, despite having combat set to automatically end after 4 minutes. Ships with repair modules have never actually repaired anything for me. Not once.

The UI sucks: Tool tips are hit-or-miss. Some buildings will display their stats (such as Factory: Costs so-and-so credits, produces so-and-so production points), while others have only vague descriptions (Advanced factory increases the industrial ouput of a planet). The empire management/economy page is very shy with any sort of actual breakdown of info. You get only the broadest idea of what's going on. Camera controls are worse than Sots, and you have to zoom waaaay in in order to click a wormhole or target a ship. Most annoyingly, to load a game, you have to go through all the menus to create a new game, then click the load game button. There's simply no option from the main menu.

Key mapping: Pressing shift (something you have to do when selecting multiple ships) randomly opens the steam overlay (which normally requires you to hold shift+tab). Before the steam hate-brigade jumps in, this is a problem of the game itself, and not steam or it's overlay. Furthermore, not all of the qwerty keys are properly mapped: when naming a ship, I discovered that "y" produces a "z." Since Kalyspo is a producer of Russian and/or Polish games, I assume LoP isn't natively English. But for something so damned simply, basic, and integral, there's simply no excuse.

The campaign/Tutorial is a travesty: I really don't even want to talk about it. Poor scripting and a few broken areas, all covered in something that can only loosely be described as writing and a story.

Combat: Oh, where to begin? On the up-side, you have manual control over your ships. On the down-side, everything else. Combat is slow, the UI interferes to the best of it's diabolic ability. Early encounters see your scout ship and an enemy scout ship endlessly circling each other, missing 98% of their shots on each other. In early one-on-one engagements, the two ships will literally circle for hours. You either have to sacrifice your ship, or send ships out in packs. While combat takes place in a separate "timed" round (the timer, as I noted earlier, doesn't work properly), it still takes place on the system map. If you happen to have ships spread out across the system, or have them all centrally located yet not immediately adjacent to the enemy ships, expect to watch them slowly close the distance over a course of minutes. All the while you're unable to do anything else. Just watch.

Graphically, the game is ugly, overly dark, and extremely unpolished.

Avoid it at all costs.

ANy updates as to where the game is now?

I'll give the game a spin this weekend too and let you guys know what I think. They have been updating the game a few times a week so I hope I can start enjoying this game. 

Bad news folks. http://www.novacore-studios.de/ 

"We very much regret to inform that the Novacore Studios UG has to quit the operation and further development work because of insolvency. We thank all of our employees and partners for their cooperation during the last two years."

That sucks. One can hope maybe modders can take on the torch. 

Those of you who bought the game, let us know what happens next. Really sucks that you buy something to get entertainment out of it, then you find out the game is near unplayable, but they say they will push updates out and as soon as they do, they say "sucker" and slam the door in your face...

Ouch.  That's not good for anyone.

If someone can tell me what format the models are in I could give an answer.

The models seem to be in ogre3d format, but there's also a legal question. I don't think anyone not affiliated with the game knows who holds the copyright (the artists, the developer, the publisher, etc.) to these assets. And even if the developer did hold the copyright, that doesn't necessarily mean that those rights cease to exist when it files for bankruptcy.

Think of the money you spent on this game as a lesson paid in full. New developers with no previous success should not be where you pre-order or buy without reading reviews. It is irresponsible and really quite foolish. As we saw with WoM, even a company you trust implicitly can let you down sometimes. That was my lesson to never risk on an unfinished product or at least accept failure as a likely possibility.

Don't get mad. Get smart.

The difference, though, is that the mods you mentioned don't reuse assets from commercial games. (They're still liable for trademark and copyright infringement, but for other reasons.)

Maybe Kalypso can be persuaded to make the artwork available under some permissive license.

I  agree, the game does sport some great visuals that could be used in Sins like this...

This can be easily re tasked as colony pods over Gas Giants in say a DS mod....

I pre-purchased the game and was very disappointed with it when it launched; mostly because it kept crashing.  But still, I waited and hoped, and waited some more.  

I feel bad for the people who worked late nights and subsisted on pizza and jolt for weeks on end to get this even this far.  And for everyone else who put their trust in the "suits" who pushed for it's release before it was ready. 

RIP Legends of Pegasus