This is par for the course with Kickstarters. They always have a mid-life crisis. Buonocore has a marketing campaign announced for next week and there will be a push at the end. It'll heat back up again.
I'm fine with the tiles. I always picture space ships/stations as being rather plain looking inside. Although maybe if you put a nice rug down it'll really tie the alien ship together.
Rugs are a great way to visually separate big spaces into smaller ones, providing the appearance of more rooms. Spaceship designers should consider that.
The tiles look like golden age sci-fi space ships, which were clean and sterile looking. Plus, busy, overwrought game boards make distinguishing between important information on a board, and decorative elements difficult. And you have to remember that the tiles are going to be crowded with aliens and tokens and cards. And yes, I am the play tester that has repeatedly pushed for dialing back the illustrations on the board.
There is still a good deal of talk and work going on around the tiles and how much/little to put in them in terms of "atmosphere". I probably shouldn't be doing this because nothing is "done" yet, but right now we are considering something that looks like this:
dial back the illustrations, I am with Uba. It should be sparse, clean, like the period it emulates. Dn't be like every other overwought board game already out there.