I keep getting amused after reading so many posts here expressing concern over the state of the game and it's impending release. Everyone is basing this on the build they have, 5.3 (.83), yet this is not even the "release candidate" that is feature complete... Why don't you wait until you/we get to play with beta 6 before expressing your worries? From everything I've seen/read beta 6 is so different from what we have that you can't compare them. Give SD a little credit too. It's in their best interest to put out a decent release as it reflects on them greatly. I think Brad and company also learned a valuable lesson with the Elemental saga and don't want to repeat it. They are quite confident that the May 14th date is doable. So I'm holding all judgement until I can play with the full featured beta before I start to express any concerns of my own. I'm funny that way.

i agree with all 3 of your points.  Especially your first. (which is being addressed pre 1.0).  Just understand that here will always be things people want In the game. The question is whether the game is ready to go 1.0. After release we can look at cool new things to do with fleet management, more sophisticated invasions, and lots of other requests.

i think your build is the first one with proper, IMO, obsoleting of ship designs (was driving me crazy bc I only use my own designs).

There are many knowledgeable people on these forums who have followed GC for several years.    Been involved in feedback, modding, testing, etc.    That is clear.   What is also clear is the the Mr. Frogboy has been planning and coding this thing for ... TWENTY years.    Four iterations actually.

Got to think he's got a fairly good feel for when the right thing to do is.  I might mention, his company has shown if they do somehow mess up, they will do the right thiing by their fans.

OK enough of that! Get that Dang Beta 6 out, you hear me?!     

Come on Brad, we have to have good AI, look what happened to beyond earth

I agree with what you said, and I think you might be right about insane type maps with the penalty issue.    But I just wanted to mention that I discovered in my current gigantic game (I have about 30% of the map controlled)  that the approval stuff one can build on starbases is very handy.    Strange though to be building up a SB and start with three factory items (for a manufacturing colony) and then add a recreational facility.  Guess that's how to attract workers!   Like I say, though, on a bigger map, or with more common habitable planets, even that may not be enough.  It should be damped down to account for map size a bit, no doubt.

Yep.  Very handy. But since they are flat bonuses and not percentage based, it won't matter one jot if you have over 100 colonies.  Or over, say, 200, after the various ideological traits and techs/improvements are factored in (I'm right now in a mad rush to build ideological buildings so I can get to the 50% bonus to Approval from Affinity IV [only 330 points away at the moment ]) .

Approval relics help in the short term, but there's something very buggy going on with them, as once I passed 100 colonies, their effectiveness plummeted. At Colony #99 I was rocking a 100% Approval empire wide. At 100 it dipped at a couple of planets, and by 105 it had tanked empire wide. That can't be a coincidence as I've piled on numerous relics since then and have only seen a marginal improvement in my overall Approval (109 planets and an empire wide Approval of 41).

Yes, I've submitted a rather detailed ticket on it.

Still, as you say, those bonuses absolutely help on maps that are only very large as opposed to, well, insane ones.

But this is the main problem.  What exactly is "sufficiently polished and balanced"?  Especially the word 'sufficiently'. This is partially a rhetorical question and partially isn't.  Mostly because I don't think it has an answer.  For me, the comparison would be Civ: Beyond Earth.  Now that was a pretty bad game at launch.  OK, fair does, it's Civ.  It's usually rather, shall we say, weak at launch.  But six months in and it hasn't improved that much,

GC III blows C:BE out of the water right now when it comes to being polished and balanced. Might be slightly unfair as they are fairly different games.  But I still think the comparison is an apt one. 

When it comes to bugs, the most glaring things are tool tip problems and the current(already fixed) issue with planet icons.  The most glaring problem, balance wise, is anomaly pirates, and that's already been dealt with.  Most other things are, as you said, a matter of taste.

Now don't get me wrong.  All things being equal, I'd like at least six weeks to hammer away at Beta 6.  But all things aren't equal.  Which really was my overall point. 

More simply, one has to decide when to draw the line.  Slightly less simply one also has to decide the consequences of when the line is drawn. 

Hehe, when I saw him on the Friday Dev Stream I went "how does that man have time for this, give him a nap!"

One thing I would say though, is that Beta 6 should be released asap, given the huge number of critical bugs it fixes.  The games launches in 3 weeks, and there are many critical bugs in beta 5, and to be on the safe side, we need to hammer critical crashes/freezes right now, so they could release a beta 7 before 'gold', worst case scenario, then a day 1 patch for other issues.  Right now, I have issues I don't know if they are fixed or not.  If I don't report them and they aren't fixed, maybe it has to do with my particular hardware and it looks bad on release.  If I do report them and they are fixed, I waste a programmer's time.

I have noticed a lot of 'coming soon' text on buttons! not to mention the complete lack of tutorials AND help encyclopedia/files

beta 6. OK. 2 days

Ok as I have tried the old google and the current GalCiv Wiki that always pops up seems to be for #2.

From SD's viewpoint: They've committed to plenty of updates (there'll be one downloadable on May 14 IIRC), a fair amount of DLC and at least two Expansions. Sorry I can't quote exact figures but you get the idea. It's not logical for them to spend too much time on getting things done for Launch Date. There's a long, looonng game update calander ahead, no point running yet.

So there's less need to have GalCiv3 tip-top, game features for Africa, pretty perfect art, AI etc on May 14. For instance, I'd have really liked it if they'd had Espionage available now - or at least were going to add it into Beta 6. But early on the announcement was Espionage would not be available in the "Base" game but would be included in one of the DLCs. My personal preference would be to have added in the Espionage now and left the Ship Designer/Race Designer and other pretty stuff for the DLCs but that's just me. Anyway, I'm okay with the decision SD made because I trust that:

A: SD want Espionage in the game - otherwise why say anything about it.

B: SD want that Espionage to be good - however many if any ideas we've come up end up in what they define as Espionage who knows and anyway, that's what modding's for.

C: SD don't want to release a half-assed, inept Espionage. Hence the wait.

More Cynical D: Those Expansions will be chargable to those who aren't Founders. May as well make the buyers feel like their bucks were well spent ie "Damn good spend of $20, this is much better!" over "Um, been playing for four hours, game's still really good of course but precisely what new or better stuff did my $20 get me?" I'm not so cynical as to suggest large errors, ommissions or mistakes will be left in: "Ah, so the Drengin still sell their best planet that's next to the player's ZOC for 1bc and the huge Pre-cursor ship the player finds self-destructs when it's near any other Player ships, leave fixing it till DLC 1!" type attitude.