I think it also just took on a bunch of technical debt and was poorly managed, so I don't know if they could have pulled it off with more time. Like they were forced by management to use KSP1 code, and were not allowed to talk to the KSP1 devs, and repeatedly hemorrhaged workers meaning even less of the code base has experts.
I think they maybe would be better off starting from scratch (reusing assets) at this point if they wanted to deliver their more difficult goals like multiplayer.