Well, a mixed message indeed.
Seems like the dev team tried to fit more in than they could achieve.
One bit of advice Zac, use the word priorotized correctly. You're saying stuff has been prioritized so it won't be making it in. Its kind of backwards. Use repriorotized.
Shame about fleet carriers, those could have been a big boon to DW2, as well as the ice planets.
So, my personal takeaway from this is:
Q4 still biggest update, but not as big as initially hoped.
Freebies in store for LEP owners but no paid for gameplay content
Paid for gameplay content will come in the future instead
FD reaffirms over 100 people working on ED (presumably you slipped that in there to provide a quote for when numpties start talking about there only being 4 people working on ED - a waste of breath, people will believe what they want to believe, or they will say its rubbish progress for so many people)
Basically you had bad news to deliver, so tried to show FD are still very much committed to ED and there are still long term plans for the game - again, to tell the detractors this is not the end of development for the game.
And considering your words, i'm going to hazard a guess that atmoshperic worlds are the big feature you're not ready to talk about.