Hi everyone --

As you may have noticed, the long-promised and -awaited combat viewer did not make it into today's Beta 3 launch. Ultimately we felt that it was the right choice to take a bit of extra time to raise the combat viewer up to the standards of quality we have for Galactic Civilizations III.

We apologize for the delay.

Here's the good news, though:

• The combat viewer should be in the next beta at the end of January.
• This doesn't mean Galactic Civilizations III is going to miss its release date.
• This doesn't mean that Galactic Civilizations III development is "in trouble" in any way.
• The rest of the development schedule is unaffected.
• Beta 3 still has a ton of stuff to play with (the Yor are awesome, and there's some pew pew on the main map at least).

The reality is that game development has a ton of moving parts, and things don't always play nicely with schedules. Five years ago, practically no developer would share its roadmap this far in advance of release for just this reason -- development is a fluid thing, and players sometimes get mad when promised features or timelines change.

Stardock firmly believes that both we as a studio and Galactic Civilizations III as a game benefit from the kind of open communication we've had with you all, though -- we wouldn't stream live every week if we didn't, or invite you to play our games (in GC3's case) a year before release if we didn't. We hope that you can all understand where we're coming from, and that you enjoy Beta 3 with its balance overhaul, Yor empire, landmark cutscenes, and the rest.

Please don't stop with the feedback and the bug reports, and happy conquering!