Roland
Community Moderator
Sounds like you are trying to win an argument/ bet against the moderator team...OK finally real news, A 18 & not BETA so reports on Steam by Mod's on BETA being next are false, thought so.
Keep up the Debugging, waiting patiently as always...
Madmole said that the game would probably go Beta after A17.
Internally they talk about changes they will make in the next update to the game which they label A18.
So here is what could happen next:
1) After A17 is stable possibly by A17.2 they COULD do a few large updates of new content and features and call those 17.3 and 17.4 and 17.5 and then go to Beta and never have an A18. And so internally when the developers talk to each other now and say A18 they'll do this or that it would actually be in A17.3 or A17.4
Then Madmole and the moderators would be correct and not false.
2) After A17 is stable they could go into beta and the changes that they are talking about being for A18 would actually be for post release and then there would be no A18 and the game would go Beta after A17 and Madmole and the developers would be correct and not false.
3) After A17 is stable the developers decide to go ahead and work on A18 and call it A18. In that case Beta would NOT be right after A17 but since Madmole always said "probably" it isn't strictly false and since the moderators were just repeating what they heard from Madmole they might turn out to be wrong but they aren't being false about it.
What it comes down to is that the developers don't really care what they call it. Only people who want to scrutinize and put significant meaning into every phrase uttered so as to win arguments on the internet or to be able to come back later with an imagined "ah ha! Gotcha!" post are spending any amount of time worrying about it.
Next is just the next step whatever it looks like and whatever it ends up being labeled.