In a statement posted at the Official Master Of Orion III website, it has been announced that MOO3, which originally planned to have 32 alien "races", will now contain 16 races.

There are two reasons for this. The first reason is of course lack of time, as the team wants to create quality races, rather than dilute their work for the sake of quality. As they state, they'd "rather have 16 unique races that all reach a jaw-dropping level of quality and speaking to you in their own language than 32 that are so-so."

The other reason is due to uniqueness in the races. In order to fill the 32 race quota, the designers found themselves quickly losing differentiation between some of the races that shared the same species. Here's a clip:

Some species lent themselves very well to multiple races. Others... well, it was pushing it to come up with four viable races when the only reason to do so was to meet the keep a specific number. "Oh here we have the 'pumice' Geodic... " It was just becoming silly. Instead we decided to concentrate on those that were truly unique and we felt were going to be exciting to play. If you still want more variety you can always customize your races just as you did in Master of Orion I and II.

Master Of Orion III - Race Announcements

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