Well, looks like the new Sub flair is PTU access!
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robertsspaceindustries.com
Not really...
It seems that instead of wave 1 being (as an example) 2000 people logging in and requiring 40 servers of 50 players each, then a few hours later those 40 servers are still running with 3 or 4 players on each as the "feature tourists" who only logged on to look at what was "new and shiny" in the upcoming patch for the PU left to return to the PU\ignore the game until next PTU patch, we'll be getting waves of 500 players needing (at most) an additional 10 servers above the capacity in the severs from previous waves.
There have been other posts by CIG which indicate that the new waves 1-4 are more like a series of ripples: 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d with no change to the PTU itself (so, content is what would have been "wave 1"), but trying to spread the load caused by players gaining access and the requirements of the servers to allow\require fewer servers (and their associated costs) for the same number of players, with the riples being .
As a side note: How much does someone really "lose" through having to wait (at most) a few extra days to look at something that everyone will have access to within the following week or 2, anyway? You don't gain anything in the PTU that carries across to the PU, so you're not "losing" progression or items that you could have gained through more time\earlier access to the PTU, there's no "I was first in the PTU" badge, and for the Imperator subscribers ($20 per month level), the ability to fly any new ships will be present when the patch hits the PU anyway, so they don't even need to worry about the PTU at all if that's all they care about...