And I haven't asked because I figured you had a reason for not volunteering it before, but: what's the details on why you and the champions don't get along? "I want an arcade mode" and "I don't want to have to do nothing while I wait on resources" are two of the more significant inspirations for champions, and are two of the things I heard a lot from you, but in the end something doesn't compute?
The arcade mode as I was thinking of it was more along the lines of the presentation. For example, right now the scoring system is fairly obtuse. It's not entirely clear what you do is worth which point values. And when you have big battles, the explosions and the fighting really doesn't hang around that long. But a lot of players on this forum have constantly remarked on how much they like the taunts (and please would you make more?). They like getting feedback from the game that they are indeed kicking all kinds of ass or, the reverse as it were. The Arcade Mode was to bring the scoring onto the battlefield, raise the visual/audio, and bring some more lasting excitement to these conflicts with the AI. For example, showing scores racking up on the battlefield with some kind of pixelated retro font. It's kind of like the old quake 3 when it would say "HUMILIATION!" Visually, it's very arcade.
As far as the champion thing, I felt compelled to micro my champion all the time, and do everything I could to level it up. It began to feel compulsive, and I felt like I had to stick around with it all the time. My grand battles (I play on high caps) started to feel like champion babysitting. I just wanted to turn it off and go back to the big battles. It didn't help that having the champion doesn't feel like an advantage later on. I feel compelled to use it. And that's where it fell off for me. All of the nebula stuff is obligatory.
Adding in the other faction, some new ships, I'm okay with that. It's not the grand battle you presented with the fallen spire. It feels like OCD behavior. But it's still worth five dollars for all the other stuff.