Quote - There are some small tweaks under the hood for rendering and slightly more efficient memory handling but little else. 

Hmmm. Not sure we're talking about the same thing here. Pioneer is actually part of the Vue 7 family, with all  of the new features including a new radiosity renderer, completely new OpenGL implementation, ability to work with 3rd party plugins and much much more. I suggest you may wish to check out this page for Pioneer:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_7_pioneer/?page=4

Everywhere you see the word "NEW!" in front of feature designates that feature as different from Vue 6. By my count, I find 302 different "NEW!'s". Hardly 'little else.'

Quote - Complete with the additional modules, 12 I believe in all, was going to be the do-all as I don’t need all of the bells and whistles of Infinite and don’t use Poser. But with no discount as Thelby indicates and with additional $50 shipping for boxed version makes it very expensive.

From e-on's own newsletter:
"Vue 6 users can upgrade their modules to the corresponding Vue 7 modules at a 50% discount."

Quote - I guess the Studios will cough-up the extra coins. I think they missed a good retail opportunity on this one. So if you want a stable package you will want Complete or Infinite, but the others are toys and have a great many problems. 

Let's see, by my count, the brand new Pioneer beta has been out less than 24 hours, and you're already saying it's a toy with a great many problems?

I'm pretty excited about how e-on has positioned this new line of products. Giving it away is certainly unprecedented for them, and it appears their module pricing is quite agressive. If you look at this page:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_7_complete/?page=0
There, you can find out more about all the modules which can be added to Pioneer to upgrade it all the way to Complete.