I love the organic nature of Aurora development,sure its quite slow and sometimes systems are a mere placeholder before being gutted and drastically changed a decade later, but the way community discussion of mechanics, gameplay, military theory, physics, other games etc helps steve form ideas which eventually make their way into the game really is refreshing.
I personally have disliked many changes that occurred if only because I thought of alternatives which seemed 'better' to me, but the overall nature of the game seems to flow smoothly toward something increasingly complex but still astoundingly elegant.
Major developers wouldn't make a game this way for many reasons, but Aurora is a tapestry woven very carefully with each thread lovingly applied, or carefully removed and replaced if need be.
I wonder what the overall design philosophy could be identified as, would it be disingenuous to claim that development is a case of throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks?
That flies in the face of the carefully woven tapestry analogy, but it does seem that sometimes this kind of thing has worked favorably for us.