Yeah, things are quickly heating up as December draws nearer, so our responciveness to the boards may seem lagging. Trust me though, time not spent on the board is being put to good use, implementing some of the features that (I think) are really going to considerably raise the game's fun factor.
Here's some of the features to look forward to in the upcoming November release (no, not sure of the date yet :()
-cultural influence: By far the biggest feature implemented will be the new was sector ownership is calculated. Now, the number of influence points you control in a sector spills over into other sectors, heating up the race to keep your people from rebelling to another races way of life. I can't explain it as well as Brad, so if you want a more detailed explanation of the calculations behind cultural influence, check it out here http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?id=7119! Very cool suff
-resources: You can now send a constructor out to mine resources, which give you a boost in a specicic area of your abilities. As you build more advanced mining faciilities, the % bonus to your abilities is also increased. As the game goes on, these will become areas of heated battle, with each warring nation trying to get that 80% bonus to economic abilities.
-ship directives: Something that the boys around the office have been asking for some time is a way to automate ships. We want this scout to patrol this sector until it's all visible. We want this survey ship to pick up any anomalies we have knowledge of. These directives will be accessable from the new ship data window and help when micromanaging large fleets.
also:
-finalized gfx for evil and good screens
-new weapon effects
-new music
-ship fleet list tweaked (think new planet list only now with ships)
-multiple save/load games interface
-yearly news report on what's been happening oround the galaxy
-more robust planet details screen
-sector influence screen (where you can view exactly what other races have cultural effects on individual sectors)
-rebellions
-more starbase mods, events, anomalies, and up issues
Yikes..I beter get back to work!
...seriously.
Stardock Forums
presume to impose, but any chance of a quick heads up on interim updates (if any) prior to the November beta three release and when will beta3 be- if you can pin it down? 
presume to impose, but any chance of a quick heads up on interim updates (if any) prior to the November beta three release and when will beta3 be- if you can pin it down? 
