Excerpt from that link:

"One of the reasons Keeling is confident that he and NGD will get this right is because they're not treating the original games' design as holy writ. He uses ship design and tactical battles as an example."

"I think that was a mistake made by some of these [later 4X] games," he said. "They thought that was a key feature that was going to bring a lot of people in. [But] you can only focus on so many things. If you focus on everything, it becomes too complex. It's unmanageable. Unwieldy. If you do a deep-dive on only a few things, they have to relate directly to what the player is doing. So while there are a lot of players that played tactical battles, there's not that many. It's about 10% of the players. So if you deep dive on that, you're wasting a lot of resources [that could have gone] to something that's really more important to the gameplay."


Sorry dude, more like 90%. Trashing tactical battles and ship design = FAIL

Ship design and research is one of the most important things in MoO? They want to drop this?

I was personally never really exited about the battles itself, more about the constellation and the weapon types I use. Only logn range is bad, only short range is bad, the mix is important. No Insectoids, not play!

I do not think they are saying that those features will be dropped there are they but are rather saying it might not be worth the time spent like GalCiv on ship design when they can focus on the other things that made MoO what it was - planetary screens etc.

That's how I have taken it anyway.

But ship design and battles were and still are very important in MOO, especially in MOO2 the right ship design can take out a whole fleet of enemies.

well, that is more of a game design issue than a cool feature:
a.i. cannot create good ship designs AND is incapable of decent tactical combat.

"So, what I meant was (guess I needed to be more clear) was that we weren't diving too deep on tactical combat and ship design at the expense of the core gameplay, as has been done by other games. We're focusing on core strategic gameplay first (because it's the most important), but we're also having extremely fun and deep tactical combat with a lot of cool features, as well as ship design more in line with the MOO2 level of control.

We're not abandoning these aspects of the game by any means, we just recognize (and yes, we have done our research) that focusing on parts of the game used by only 10% of the players isn't the way to make the best game, it's the way to ensure that the primary gameplay - conquering the galaxy through strategic decisionmaking and resource management - would not be up to par.

Don't worry, we've got this. More to come. "

You might be surprised about the Elerians mate. If you read what they have written for the Psilon bio it mentions their hate of the Elerians. Wonder why they would mention that if they were never going to be in the game.

Don't know if I can stomach another surprise regarding Elerians like MoO3s "gone extinct/minor race" solution (not that it stopped me to repopulate 30% of the galaxy map with them as soon as I found a Elerian splinter planet :P).

The hate is understandable with Psilons being the genocidal megalomaniacs they usually turn out to be in every game.

Edit:
In addition (or correction) to what I previously wrote I found this tasty passage:
----
While there's no confirmed launch date for Master of Orion, it will eventually get a full retail release on PC ( no free-to-play shenanigans here! )
----
Last paragraph here: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/06/master-of-orion-wants-to-be-a-wondrously-complex-4x-game-that-anyone-can-play/

I won't take it as a confirmation of anything but its good to read.


Edit2:
Where did you read the racial description? I surfed a bit on their HP http://masteroforion.eu/races/ and Psilons are not done yet there (and the screenshot of them did not said anything about Elerians; which are absent in the "all races" section)

"Where did you read the racial description?"

check out:
http://forum.masteroforion.com/

Ah, thanks. Was on the nobody reads them anyway EU forums :/

I think I saw it on their FB page.

Non that I found, but there is a reference with the Bulrathi: http://forum.masteroforion.asia/index.php?/topic/33-bulrathi-a-sneak-peak/ under relations:
---
The Bulrathi are on good terms with the Elerians, as the Elerians respect their planet and the creatures of their home world very highly. The Bulrathi see the Elerians as a decent race. The Bulrathi see the Humans as tentative allies and as fellow warriors, but they strongly disagree with the damage the Humans cause to Sol.
---

But since the release races are already set in stone I guess the best we can hope for is for the races currently not in to arrive in an expansion pack.

Terran race just been announced on FB for collectors edition.

Not to confuse ppl. Its the evil Terran Empire for the CE; the normal stock-MoO Terrans are in for any edition.