I'm hoping they have been probing up until this point and hope they plan to release it under the radar soon, but it needs to happen asap. Hear me out as to why, because I understand that this is an early access game and there are "more pressing issues" and I agree, however its time to turn it on.
The Devs are on the verge of losing dozens of players just in my sector alone where we're losing this battle to a group of people who shouldn't stand a chance. We crush them in combat at sea without fail. We siege their structures but there's no raid building cooldown so no progress is made. We push them back on land despite being aim, and wallhacked against. When we fall back because the eco war is won, and its impossible to force them out due to their cheats they raft over to our base and once again use cheats to spawn in objects on the deck of our boats until they sink. We would be crushing them without cheats and exploits but they're still in the game. So at the end of all this we still want to play the game but our options are limited to (A) Quit, (B) Cheat as well, or (C) Keep playing handicapped until we hate the game so much we never touch it again. This is not just me, this is the sentiment among my entire company, and several of the companies in the alliance in my sector.
The final reason as to why they need to get the anti-cheat rolling is that I know this isn't happening to just us. I see a dozen posts every day here and on the on the official forums about cheaters. You can't test a game that people aren't playing. I'm gonna hold out for one more major version update, but I can say the same for the rest of my guys if it isn't fixed by then I'm probably done for a long while along with whoever else I manage to get to hold on until then.
P.S. yes this is an exact copy of my post to reddit.