I was not ready to pay upwards of 200 dollars in the long run (which it appears one is expected to do) for this game.
Then don't. Come back in a couple of years, see if you're still interested and if it's enough for you by then and buy into whatever season is then ailable. That will give you all the features added in the meantime, if they follow their current model.
Don't expect me to have much sympathy for you coming into an addon OT openly stating that you'd expect the things a dev has worked on and will work on in the meantime for free.
And yes, this is an expensive game that may give you far less value in pure dev effort than any of those high profile games out there. Either live with it and come for constructive criticism - like
what exactly would the game need to keep you engaged - or go ask Blizzard, Rockstar, Valve or any other of the high profile devs out there to start making space games. Sure, GTA 5 positively trounces Elite in terms of available content, no doubt about that. Diablo receives huge free updates. Dota 2 or HotS are completely f2p. Which of those are space sims again? If you just happen to not care as much about space games, then at least consider by which standard you measure the available ones.
Have you considered that - just maybe - if something is not in the game after a certain time, other than being attributable to the dev's incompetence or greed, which is quiet well possible - it might also simply be due to the limits the devs are working with? Manpower, budget, potential target audience?
Expecting the devs to ask for less money is
surely the way to expand the game further.
Personally asking people to put like £30 or whatever it is down for an expansion, and hoping the content they promise is actually delivered throughout the year feels a bit wrong to me. I know it's technically a season pass but to me as someone who bought the base game on day 1, a much better approach would of been a season pass for the year that costs say £20, and then at the end of next year you can buy the complete "horizon" expansion for like 30-35 or something. The upfront cost for this for me is like the same price I bought the original game for, when at this point, it doesn't offer a whole lot more.
It is actually quiet understandable that this model may feel abusive. You pay the full price up front, but not all the goods will be delivered until about a year later. I'm suspecting this is more of a concession to the fact that what they want to do, they simply can't do in a year's time, but still need the funding to do it. It's a form of "early access" without the discount for the early adopters. But it's also a form of quasi subscription for an online game that doesn't ask for an actual time based subscription. If you don't think supporting the dev with the current price point is worth it, just consider waiting for a discount on Horizons at the end of next year, when season 3 is probably about to start. That way you don't pay as much, still support the dev a little, but get to play the game anyway.