The ship design feature of Galactic Civilizations II has become one of the most popular features in the game. It is far more popular than we had ever expected and gives us a lot of ideas in the future on how to make it even better.  While the coding team has been working on v1.1, v1.2, and soon v1.3, we tried to think of something for the art team to work on. Art, as many people know, is expensive. That is doubly true of art that involved being modeled, textured, rendered, lit, etc.  So the question was posed -- if we put up a mini-expansion for $9, would people buy it? The expansion would have had probably around 2 new hulls per ship style along with a ton of jewelry (10 hulls total I believe plus countless other parts).

While a narrow majority of people wanted it, it would have really required a super majority (i.e. like 75%) to justify the expense involved.  The decision was made to roll ship pieces into the expansion pack which we expect to announce early next month (it won't be out until near the end of this year). We've got the plot down for the campaign and that links does give away a couple of the features in the expansion. There will be more playable civilizations in the expansion pack but two of the existing ones will be destroyed by the end of the campaign and won't be in any future sequel as a major race.  The new poll lets players try to guess one of the 2 major civilizations to be making a final exist in the expansion.

Update: The campaign is NOT the main emphasis of the expansion. There will be a number of significant new features that the expansion will center around.  Moreover, while 2 races will be destroyed during the campaign, they will still exist (along with the 2 new ones) in sandbox mode. In a future sequel (ala a GalCiv 3 some years from now) they would be removed.