I'd call it a failure. You grounded old Players who only have an Alpha in their desperate effort to find their Beta. They have mission control 0, the extra mission for Alpha is gone, so they are grounded for at least 5 days until MC lvl 1 is enhanced. If I was such a player, I would just say "fuck you" and leave the game. After all the effort put in, leveling shit to build explorers, exploring a lot of space without success.