A headline on the Line of Defense website announces the release of the Line of Defense on Steam early access, though the body of the announcement clarifies that today marks the beginning of pre-purchases and preloads, and that actual early access to 3000AD's MMOG will begin on Monday. Here's word on how this all works:

After some delay while we create new Early Access tiers, work through the kinks, last minute tweaks etc, the game is finally going live on Steam Early Access.

At some point today, it will be available to pre-purchase and pre-load at a 50% discount for all three Early Access tiers (Commander ($99.99), Ambassador ($69.99), Emissary ($39.99)). This one-time only discount will run from today, Wed, Sept 10th through to midnight on Mon, Sept 15th.

The game is going live (playable) on Tue, Sept 16th. At which time if you already pre-purchased and pre-loaded the game, you will be able to join a server and get going.

It is very – very – important that BEFORE you buy any tier, that you please read our Early Access FAQ in order to get a better understanding of what this is about and what we’re doing. This FAQ text is identical to what you will see on the game’s Steam page as well once it goes live.

Direct Steam Store links. Commander, Ambassador, Emissary