Finally I got around to opening a "Steam" account and with a little difficulty finally managed to download the alpha [as of a few hours ago].  Don't know which version of the alpha I've got, but after trying a couple of games, I've given up playing; because there is no viewable universe in which to see my ships or any planets or anything at all.  I did wonder whether you had to research the "Sensors" tech to see anything but dismissed this as taking much too long. 

I have windows 7, a GTX670, 16Gb Ram and an i7-3820 [4 core, 8 threads] processor.

The planet improvement screen works pretty well although, having built a colony ship and a constructor, they are permanently "stationed" with seemingly no way to launch them; not much point in doing so when you can't see where to send them.

The best thing about it is the opening video which is superb apart from the vocals not being loud enough or enunciated clearly enough for me.  But I struggle with my hearing anyway these days, people tend to talk much too fast for me to understand what they're saying although I can hear the noises that are made.

I'm not over-the-moon about having to use "Steam", the site mainly wants to sell games that I don't want or choose friends that will play on-line games in which I have no interest.  It doesn't appear to want to update GalCiv3 or allow me to use the 'official' feedback channel.

I vaguely remember that a version of the Altarian Prophecy had a 3D Galaxy which was never revived in GC2, it was an attractive feature which I'm going to suggest for revival for GC3.  And could you please make all planets have more useable tiles as in GC1 where a minimum requirement for a planet to be habitable was 15 useable tiles.

I am not impressed with the eventuality of having 100+ opponents/races, an absolute maximum of 10 major races plus a more diverse set of minor races would enable better playability for me.  To be honest I'm still impressed with Twilight of the Arnor and its sandbox and modding playability;  If GC3 was as good with a three-dimensional universe [say 7high/deep by 100 long by 100 wide], with the whole planetary system of sun and 8 or 9 planets within a cell-grid of the Galaxy, of which 1 would be instantly habitable and up to a further 3 which could be habitable by active terraforming not merely via technological advances, then I would be more than happy.  I like to be able to develop planetary infrastructure that creates generous resources.

Oh yes, Starships.  I always found the default models wanting.  All of my designs were multi-equipped with all three types of attack and defence capabilities, anything less just seemed stupid, illogical and asking to be defeated in combat.

Enough suggestions for Frogboy and the team to mull over I think.  Please let me know when you have developed the game enough for me to be able to view whatever galaxy the alpha can create, thankyou.