I would not expect to see SE any more. Steamworks provides built-in support for capturing and auto-uploading memory dumps when crashes occur, so we'll probably continue to leverage that.

GC2 doesn't use Steamworks (LH and Rebellion do).

Whatever Gc3 is going to use I want to know, and how are we going to accomplish that. If you are going to make this easy. Please do anounce when this comes out.

Actually,

is too simplistic an answer, although it is probably all the answer we will get for the time being. Unanswered are any steps we will have to take to enable this (if any), and what we will see when exception data is captured and transmitted, if anything (Note: I insist on being notified of any such events).

Also missing is how to initiate gathering and transmitting diagnostic data for "loops" or "hangs" (which will definitely require user intervention).

I expect StarDock to include this information with the announcement of the availability of the Alpha code (or sooner).

Steamworks is a free API given to developers who want to publish games on Steam. It basically gives devs the infrastructure that Steam allows like achievments, matchmaking, VAC, etc.

As stated before GalCiv3 is s Steam game so you'll need Steam to play it. Likely the way it will work is that when the alpha is ready, your Stardock profile will give you a cd-key you can register on Steam. This will then give you access to the beta. For example, Klei's new game Invisible Inc. is working the same way. You buy their game on their store, and you get a c-dkey for the current alpha/beta access, which you register on Steam to add to your library to play.

Here's a tidbit from the Steamworks page.

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/developmenttools.php

This is likely what they're talking about. Basically Steam does certain things for you to a degree. This doesn't catch everything of course or every situation imaginable. But it's easier than making users upload dumps to a dropbox location for at least certain kinds of game crashes.

As I've said before, Steam is popular because of Steamworks. It's a free middleware product that does a ton of stuff for devs so they don't have to bother to make certain things. The trojan horse into Steam is Steamworks, which solves the 'content' problem most other stores  have.

No idea!

I assume that unless the game makes a dump somehow it's not going to send data. So a task manager kill, which generaly just obliterates the PID, isn't likely to do much? Take the steamworks page for waht its worth. There's it may do more or less than indicated. Only a dev would really know what kinds of things it's capable of. But it does.... 'something'