Frontier are obviously aware of the risks associated with adding more and more stuff into a project.
When it comes to scope, there has to be a pretty high degree of ruthlessness employed. I reckon that's what you're seeing here.
I'm a big fan of this style of project planning and execution! How much more fun would 75 flyable ships be for players of the initial release, compared to 25? close to zero, in my opinion. But how much more time, manpower and risk would be added trying to deliver 75 instead of 25?
Also consider the decisions FD make in terms of level of detail of their ship models. Their models are more than adequate for general flying around, shooting stuff, docking, scooping, exploring, etc. They aren't crazy, over-the-top detailed, probably because that would become a time sink for their designers, need additional optimisation, push the "Recommended Hardware" a notch or two higher, etc.
But... here's the thing... If they put a sensible cap on the number of models they have cut, it makes their life easier later on, when they decide to rework their models with higher definition. Less ground to revisit, and all that.
So I'm happy to see a reasonably tight list of initial ships in the initial release. FD are more likely to get the game released when they actually want to. They can switch focus to "additional content" stuff after that.
