It's really hard to say, and to some extent that may wind up being up to Keith. I know we won't be doing any work whatsoever on it this year, thanks to AI War 2. I won't be surprised if AI War 2 takes up most of Keith's time in some form in 2018, too; right now that's the thing that has people excited and that we actually know how to deliver.
On my end I don't really think I'll be working on SBR again personally, unless enough time passes and I have some sort of brain wave about it. That said, I have really been entranced by the idea of making a game that is more like the "Stars Beyond Reach: Tales of Woe" series in a direct fashion. An indirect tethered-to-a-wall citybuilder where you never get much of an overview but instead are ground-level with morons all around you could be amazing if done well, or horrendous if done most ways. So I'm very wary of that concept, but it's one that interests me a lot more than the original 4X designs at this point.
Keith had his own 4X designs that he was working on for the game, and those were at various stages of acceptability-to-him. But that's been on hiatus since May 2016 or so, when he had some family growth going on as well as moving house, etc. I'm not sure how excited he feels about SBR at this point, but I know he was really burned out and I know he's super into AI War 2 right now. Whether or not there's this a-ha point for him a year or two or three from now when he's suddenly refreshed and interested in it, and the burning flame of excitement for AI War 2 has died down some, I don't know.
There's also always the possibility that we'll work with someone else to take this over and finish it with their own vision. It would have to be just the right sort of person, though, and Arcen would either have to build up a lot of funds before I'd be willing to risk funding that myself (I've already got like $430k invested into SBR), or the person (or company) would have to do it for some sort of revenue split on the back-end. It would really take just the right person or company, though, and most such people already have game ideas of their own that they are passionate about.
From a design standpoint, my own interests in terms of strategy games have really drifted a lot to being more focused and deep with fewer mechanics, rather than trying to simulate an entire planet. My biggest problem with SBR tended to be the just monstrous amounts of information flying at my face at all times, and how that can wind up making you feel more disconnected from things. I like big games very much, but I also really want to solve the issues in such a way that I retain a personal connection with it.
And right now I'm more excited about VR to be honest, so that's probably me out of the picture on this for another year or two when you combine in my work on AI War 2.
So... long story short, right now we really have No Idea (tm), and no particular plans to resume work anytime soon. But in an abstract sense we still really like the idea despite our frustrations with it, and obviously we have a lot of money invested into it. We're all really averse to just plopping into it and pushing out something uninspired, though, and we don't have the funds to go really digging for the last pieces of inspiration needed to tie everything together properly. It's really a shame, I thought this would be a slam dunk. :/
