14 credited writers tells a big part of the story I think. Doesn't help that the gameplay is beyond subpar. It's honestly sad because DoK was good so something likely from GB caused everything to shit the bed. I even was a fig backer ;-;

Yep. That is most likely where the main issue lay. You have all these cool variant ships entirely locked up in wargames, with all of the interesting artefacts to bolster some form of descision making nad none of that is avaliable in the Campaign or the skirmish.