There are not many early access games around, that don't even have a 4 week release cycle (Minecraft in beta had 2 months inbetween???). I think it's very good that Shine now sticks to a longer period. I found it odd, that they dictated themself this 2 week release cycle anyway. I mean this works for early development versions, but the more complex the game gets, the longer it takes to change and progress it.
On the other hand, I understand why they tried to keep those small periods: The more frequent updates are, the more players pay attention to the game.
For me this doesn't change so much. I played Empyrion like 3 months ago, and read the update logs since then. I saw that they didn't improve key features that I need in the game, so I wouldn't have started the game even if they pressed out updates each week. Who cares if I can visit 10 planets with some lousy POI's, that isn't so much better than exploring in Starmade. Oh and they added some different ways to mine - with turrets *unexcited face*. If they would've added some real ships instead of drones attacking you - that would be some whole new level. But so it's pretty generic for me.
In Starmade on the other hand, they updated the shaped block manufacturing some time ago, improved the engine so I have 60 fps instead of 24 before with even better graphics, and fixed the beam damage of weapons. Oh and don't forget the factions update...I allways forget about it, because I didn't even came to fiddling around with it. I am not sure: Can I allready put some own faction into the game that gets spawned?