Dev Stream Today (Friday, May 30), 1pm Pacific Time

Can you talk abit about map features besides nebulae and dust clouds we can expect, such as black holes and stellar rifts, and what kind of gameplay effects these will have? Will it be possible for these features to change or grow during the game, for example a mega event where you have to stop a black from growing and eventually covering the entire map.

What is the team size on galciv3, and has this changed or will this change?

Thanks for including European times, I always get confused with how many time zones the US has (and where they are start/finish!)

i use http://wwp.centraleuropeantime.com/ most of the time, i find it simpler to use then converting sites.

A planet based shipyard can only be disabled by spies or taking over the planet, how does defense of a space based shipyard work? Will rushing to destoy a opponents starport early be possible? 

will starports be upgradable in any way? is relocating a starport a default feature or something that is unlocked later?

I'll be asleep when it goes live, will have to watch the rerun. What is the latest word on hotseat multiplayer? All I really want is to control more than one civilizations at the same time.

Will the new planet screen be in the new Alpha build? Also Are all the ship designs going to be in, ect... Freighters, Astroid miners, Large hull, huge hull ect...

Just caught the replay  Lots of very good stuff!  You can tell there has been a lot of good work in a lot of places.  

The shipyard looks great. Many wonderful toys to play with.  I am going to love gizmos.  Exporting parts is a real good idea.

I enjoy the planet textures, especially the really arbitrary combinations.  As I watched, a couple gamer family members came by and caught the planet textures being shown.  They say, "Sweet" in unison.

I am coming around to the concept of starports separate from the planets. I have been dubious about having some fragile thing out there to defend.  Tell me again why a megalomaniac conqueror like me would put such a precious object outside of my copious planet defenses.  I may be insane, but I'm not stupid.  We'll see.

I like the way the tech tree is coming along. That looks satisfying.

I love the grid pattern as the background for the shipyard.  I also like the space and planet background.  Obviously, you are going to have to allow us to choose between one or another or import our own pic, video, whatever.

Sadly missed this when live. Great stream though...I think this demonstrates the biggest leap in progress (at least to people out of Stardock) so far.

The gizmo's on the design screen are fantastic, huge improvement on the usability of designing ships, also love the option to create new exported parts. Overall polish on the visuals are also very nice, like the 'grid' background in the ship designer. The new planets and their corresponding screen changes are also great.

Tech tree design is fantastic, love finally being able to see it all laid out.

Can't wait to be able to play a build with all these improvements 

Sorry about the audio!

Here's the YouTube:

Great stuff as usual... Will the shipyard have a phantom ship being constructed when it is being built. You know a un-constructed ship slowly being built with sparks and stuff on the main map. Giving an idea of what is being built... at least tiny, medium, large ship. Just a flavor construction type.

WOW! Can't wait to watch this one. Just have to finish a Civ5 MP-game here.

Should starports require a troop transport to take them over/not be destroyable?

At the very least, I think they should have starbase defenses that can be attached to it, with the home planet starbase getting some defenses at the start of the game (and they should have a good chunk of hp)

Good idea.

Last thing I want is some griefing idiot suiciding my base and winning in ten turns.

Yay! Lots of cool stuff! I'm super excited, but PLEASE please don't force paths in the tech tree! Maybe penalize going down a second path, but I don't want to be told that I can ONLY get certain techs... I get the whole bit of "player choices should be meaningful", but to completely cut off other options in the tech tree just isn't fun to me.

Sorry i have been MIA on the forums, but as you can see tones of stuff to do. 

We will never force you to go up a particular branch in the tree, the ages are just their to help the game flow, you will still be able to go crazy in the tree. 

Can you answer a question?

I was disappointed that there don't seem to be multiple prerequisites for any techs, and that it is by-and-large a copy of the old one from GC2.

Will there be improvements to the tree in the future? You said that they weren't "real" techs, so I'm hopeful that this isn't final.

HOLY SH%T!!! The new shipyard UI looks AWESOME!!!! I cannot wait to get a chance to use it! Holy MOLY! I love it!!!!  I have done pretty well with the GCIII Alpha Shipyard given what we had to test with but the newer interface just look SO damn good and pretty easy to use as it was for GC 2. I am gonna go crazy making the ships I really wanted for GCII! I cannot wait to test it out!

WELL DONE!!!!!