How will crafted things and buildings work for players that are inconsistent or low time commitment players, players who put in a few hours in a couple of weeks? Or for that matter, players who take a break for say a couple months?

So far I haven't been able to find any good builds that use the wood shields. Are they a bit anemic or are there good uses for them?

When building a cart the first log is placed in it and disappears. It says it needs 16 but you need to place a 0th log so it actually needs 17.

On aerhen, on the lighting island I was harvesting and there was a plant that displayed as ready to be picked but couldn't be. It interacted like it had already been picked while displaying all signs that it was ready.

This only happened to one plant. All others in the area were fine. Suspect maybe I couldn't click on it because it's base was below the ground or something. Seems a local map problem.

The game is evolving at a good pace which means the wiki is constantly out of date. I don't know if there is a gameplay reason not to have accurate and available information on the content. If there is than limit the scope here but I believe it would be relatively simple to write a scraper to pull from your content db. You probably want to create a read only mirror db for this if you think it adds value a good idea. That would let devs like me make cool tools players can use to examine their builds, opponents and the game in general.
-- db admin day job

In this vein, tho it absolutely would be harder, if we could get a better view into the mechanics of the game that would help people like me who have questions about what the choices we're making mean.

How will crafted things and buildings work for players that are inconsistent or low time commitment players, players who put in a few hours in a couple of weeks? Or for that matter, players who take a break for say a couple months?

I haven't pledged and I would pin it to three factors, time frame, price point and risk.
The biggest one is time frame putting money behind a project that is three, maybe four years from completion is hard. Like do I still want to play this kind of game in three years? I can't say with enough certainty so I'm not ready to invest in this.
The second reason is price point alpha and beta keys are cool and something I want but the price point for them is too high.
Lastly risk, the project is huge and you are right it will take years. But that's so long and so big. Like what if it simply exceeds budget or your studio is bought and the project is scrapped or put out half finished? There are so many what-ifs.
That said the foundation is cool, this is the most exciting project I've seen in a long time and it seems to be managed realistically and smartly to boot, at least from the outside.

Sounds like you'll need a fence on Syndesia.

Just saying hi!