What major bugs? Anyway what I said is absolutely not a cop out, Banks will be changing the game massively so if you expect a completely bug free experience you will be sorely disappointed.
I think it depends on what you define as a 'bug.'
To me, a 'bug' is something that is designed correctly but has been implemented in a broken manner. For example, the devs accidentally introduce an equation that, due to a typo, causes a divide-by-zero error that crashes the game. Or, as another example, they intend, and state in the docs, that naval capacity is population times 5, and again, due to a typo or a mistake, it is actually population times 50. These are unintended issues that arise to to large programming code-bases and the fact that humans write code, and humans are not infallible, and therefore, there will be bugs or mistakes in the code. Clicking on something and not getting the proper response from the UI, for example, is another sort of bug. You are quite correct that it is impossible to have a game of the size and complexity of Stellaris without
bugs.
But the OP, and subsequently one or two others like myself, is not worried so much about bugs. Bugs are code errors or spreadsheet errors and they will be found and fixed. Many dev teams, and it would not shock me to learn that pdx is similar, have one full-time programmer whose main job is to track down bugs and squash them. They will get to those, and we can live with it until the can. But there are other issues such as
game balance issues, which absolutely will be introduced as a result of this massive DLC and the OP is right to be concerned about how these will affect the game experience. How the political changes alone will affect nearly every single player's game play, and what this will mean for a whole variety of game experiences from War in Heaven to Vassalizing smaller empires is difficult to predict because, again, only a small # of people have so far tested things out. These game balance issues are not bugs, but underlying design elements which may even be working as intended and still not well liked by players. Sectors are a great example of this -- lots of us hate them or at least how they are implemented. They are not bugged -- but some of us don't like the way they are designed. Elements such as this, we cannot have any confidence will be changed (as sectors, fundamentally, have not for the entire 8 or so months the game has been live), because they are technically
working as intended, and are just designed in a way we don't like.
Another great example is missiles. It is taken as a given at this stage that missiles are gimped, because of some basic aspects of how they work. One major flaw people cite is that missiles in flight will disappear (and do no damage) if the ship that launched them is destroyed. This causes missiles to do less damage over the long term than the other attack types, and consequently most players stay away from missiles. Does Utopia implement changes to missiles that will fix this issue? And if so, what are the chances that the 'fix' will break something else that previously had been working, like lasers or plasma? I think most people would agree that if the fix, for examples, goes from making missiles 'teh gimporz' to 'teh ubarzz' in one go, that is not what people want -- they want parity, so that what weapon you choose is a flavor choice or a choice among different but equivalent power levels. Not for missiles to become a god-weapon.
None of these are 'bugs' -- these are game design elements. According to the dev diaries, hundreds of basic core game systems are going to be changed or affected in some minor or major way by Utopia. Exactly how these will all interact with one another in-game to affect the average player's experience is impossible to foresee. And thus, the OP is right to be worried. And I submit, respectfully, that he is also right to complain that dismissing his concerns as being about 'bugs' is a misrepresentation of the facts -- and a dodge.
