The other question is, if you can have one beta, why not two to actually look at the core gameplay around carriers? You have several dev branches, why not have one which looks at the gameplay of carriers (i.e. what things it adds, what are its limits) -in short we play with a 'future' hot build. All this can go on independently of the bug fixing.
That way you can overlap without one 'breaking' the other, and you still have a test to find any inconsistencies / balance issues. It might be that after solidifying EDs base you wind up with another flawed concept that requires another update to augment or fix- at least here the devs can see the idea of MCs in action enough to anticipate problems.
Whoa, let's not start playing with fire here.
As often as we see regressions crop up, I'm not certain they entirely have a grasp on their version control system.
The "ship pips bug out when deploying SRV" bug was fixed/recurred a couple of times during the beta phase of one of the Beyond updates, still made it into Live after beta was over, and had to get fixed again.
Lots of people clamoring for betas lately, but I guess they've forgotten that beta periods in this game historically haven't really meant that the released product is less buggy at all. I can't even imagine them trying to run two concurrent betas at once.
I'd love to see bugs get fixed, but I'm kind of cynical given track records.
Edit: This came across a bit more negative than I meant it to. I believe they are capable of fixing bugs, and I know bugs will eventually be fixed -- they have fixed plenty of bugs in due course. But I don't think "give us a beta" is the silver bullet people want it to be.
