Great painting and a good article!
How did you do the panel lines? Pen?
I'm still waiting for my stuff... let's see when it gets here.
But I personally never got the whining about the parts count. I've built 1/200 Macross models previously and these seem to be on the same level of complexity.

It's a completely different thing when you can alter the design to fit manufacturing capabilities rather trying to faithfully reproduce an existing design like here.
Things happen and you have to keep the company alive and project rolling, that is understandable. But it is not a very nice feeling when the company seems to think of your pledge as money in the bank and concentrates on getting new sales. This can manifest as lack of communication, delivery schedules, final retail pricing (*cough* Reaper *cough*)...