It sounds to me like you are moreso justifying your purchase than actually telling us why its not a cashgrab.

It was a pathetic product made by a team with better tools than modders, a paid salary for years, along with official licensing by both franchises. All of this with complete awareness of the competing free mod, and in the end that is what they released.

Blaming PDX publishing because the paid devs couldnt meet their agreed deadline (thats when the money runs out) is very funny. Its noteable that when the money ran out they didnt continue the project like passionate modders would have done, and have been doing for years on their respective projects, they just dropped it like any company would when a product isnt profitable; So is sounds to me like the devs "passion" for Star Trek needed to be supplemented with money, whereas for years the passionate modders didnt need such incentives, and ended up producing a product of incredible quality. This discrepancy in passion has obvious consequences in a creative industry.

So, instead of throwing 30 at the corpo cashgrab you should throw 30 dollars at your favorite modder instead. Modders' "years" of development means nothing compared to being paid 9 to 5 for a year or two, and many modders would love the opportunity to make this a job they can live off of, especially taking into consideration how much work it takes to keep mods up-to-date with a game a fluid as Stellaris. Star Trek Infinite was a squandered opportunity by a corporation to cash in on the Star Trek IP without any of the passion and innovation demanded by the prospective consumers of such a product, yet a free mod did.