The decision was made, FPS with space flight and very high fidelity.
The struggle mostly came from the building up the studios and distributing the work, and from the thing that they have 50X the money they asked for originally, so they adjusted the scope to make a better game from the money they have. OFC they could have released a minimal product
Since they reorganized them last year, laid down the pipelines and finally done with the engine changes, the development picked up pace hugely (2.0-2.5-3.0 all great steps forward). If 3.0 will be a core "game like" version, with some core professions, missions, and earning ingame money, then they mostly just needs to add in the assets, planets-stations etc.