The planned changes for the upcoming Starbound patch which is said to be the final patch that will require a complete wipe of all saves have been revealed at last.
In a blog post community manager Mollygos says that the reason this particular update has taken so long is in part due to the team taking some time to relax over the holidays and “Bug fixes. Bug fixes everywhere.” She says that we can expect the patch in about a week's time and then goes on to list the things the update will bring, split into new features and a list of bug fixes, the latter being a lot longer than the former.
For me the most notable bug fixes are those that stop you re-spawning outside the ship when you die (had this happen a few times to me) and one that will stop characters blinking while sleeping in a bed, something that was one of the first bugs pointed out by most beta testers of the game. The additions bring new decorative hats (“Yay, hats!”), some new weapons including pulse rifles, hand grenades and shivs and the addition of two new game-modes: permadeath and 'inventory-drop-on-death' mode (or as I like to think of it: Minecraft mode when you haven't got 'keepInventory' turned on).
The post promises that this is the last time characters and ships will need to be wiped during an update, but does say some updates might wipe the solar maps and planet data in future as some updates might change biomes or the celestial map in some way. Either way, from this point I can see many people joining the realms of beta testers now, having held back until they knew they could make and keep a character.
Blog post is here.