Awhile ago, FFG let the genie out of the bottle on hard errata as a means to buff (cluster mines) and nerf (most of the other ones) problem cards, as opposed to just clarifying how they were meant to work, or fixing actual mistakes. This has resulted in a different, probably better game (I know there's some push back on that), but has had the downside of creating a growing number of scenarios where cards do things in game quite different to what they say. And that is a problem, not just because newer players might struggle, or misunderstand how their opponents list (or even there own) flies, but just generally because it's bad design to need auxiliary documents overruling primary documents that come in the game box.
The solution FFG appear to have landed on is to just put the corrected cards into reprints of the expansions, but that's obviously no good for people who already own them and aren't likely to buy more (how many people actually plan on repurchasing a raider for a Palp reprint?). In some cases they get a second timely chance (see Advanced SLAM in the gunboat), but that's not reliable (and won't happen at all for unique upgrades like Zuckuss)).
That leaves only one other means by which they can get cards out to the player base: through tournaments. but forcing the kits to be exclusively for errata'd cards would presumably screw up whatever system they use now to decide what to use, and still means taking a long time to clear a large number of erratas (at least a year for the four big ones from the last big FAQ before you could even move on to the next one we know is coming).
So, my idea. Would you pay more to play in a tournament once a year or so, where the participation prize was a little pack (think Magic booster) of reprinted errata'd cards? You might not get every card (an alternate Palp source, for example, would probably eat into Raider sales) but maybe a Zuckuss crew card, a pair of fixed X7 titles, a Manaroo, and maybe some corrected instruction cards for cloak and cluster mines? Or, alternately, would you be okay with making those the participation prize at store championships, or regionals? Would it be worth it to pay a few extra dollars worth of printing costs, or would you rather keep it at the current price point/get actual alt-arts? That assumes that none of the cards in the pack are alt arts themselves, of course.
And, probably most important, do you think this is something FFG might actually do? OP upgrade cards are, after all, the key reason for some expansion packs getting bought (see Starviper), and providing alt arts and opening up the secondary market that way will have a potential effect on sales. But, on the flipside, if they had a mechanism to distribute fixed cards in a timely manner, it might let the resistance among the designers to hard errata, and allow them to tweak things a little more liberally, which might be a net positive for the game, and a better game keeps players longer and sells more.
