This post will point out a positive opinion of mine towards DU in the hopes of encouraging it.
I'm coming from playing Star Sonata for 10-15 years. I played it since I was very, very young. The developers make promises and set goals that are never accomplished. They dont communicate with each other or the community hardly at all, let alone well. It takes tons of time for anything to get done, even simple things. Long standing, huge bugs are gone un-communicated within the dev team. Also, the game mechanics are very horrible. It would take too long to get into specifics on this one.
Because of these things, I have lost my faith in the game and the developers. They no longer have any credibility, as the statements they make and goals they set are rarely achieved, and the decisions they make seem very misguided, along with a toddler-level communication system. Star sonata also wipes their sandbox every 4 months, making it not very fun at all to make a 'home.'
DU seems to be the opposite. Every decision they make seems to see the big picture. For instance, DU is striving to make sure that people have free places to build, but that there will also get to be 'movie like space battles,' and motivation for said battles.
DU clearly communicates very well. I feel that I don't really need to explain this one. They have dev blogs, videos, tweets, gaming convention meetings, etc etc.
DU works very quickly and efficiently, making really good decisions. Obviously, I cant expect a small game to compare in speed. However, SS had a steam launch date set for YEARS ago, which 'is being worked on' still. There are also accounts (not mine) that were given a specific ban time, and they have yet to be unbanned -- months and months past the ban time. DU has been showing results for the projects they say they are going to do.
The concept of what you do in DU matters, because were all together and it is all *kind of* permanent (someone can blow it up), is absolutely amazing. For me, when thats combined with the combat aspect, this is absolutely amazing.
Overall, Im crazy excited, and have some really nice faith built up in the devs, and I see them as credible. I have faith that they will make the best decisions possible, because of their actions and how they've communicated and the really good decisions they've made up to this point - everything from the travel system (stargates, FTLs, etc) to the voxel system, to the aspects of combat, and safe zones. DU is the game Ive been searching for for so, so long, and does everything right that SS does wrong.
*This post is purely my opinion*