Star Control Origins: Fleet Battles BETA Getting Started Guide (Updated 11/16)

Welcome to the Star Control Origins: Fleet Battles BETA!  Here is a quick guide to get you started! 

Important for Steam users: Make sure you are using the "Star Control Origins - Fleet Battles BETA" product.  

Crafting

Fleet Battles comes with pre-built ships that we feel are pretty cool.  You can also build your own ships through the Crafting screen.  

  • Choose "Crafting" from the main menu
  • Choose "copy" to modify an existing design or "new" to start fresh
  • Click on a part from the left-hand menu and click in the 3D view to place it.  
  • After the first part placed, parts are attached to the red "hard points"
  • Use the transform sliders to adjust the position, rotation, and size
  • Use the color tab to change the part colors
  • You need to add mounts for weapons, engines, and thrusters before outfitting your ship
  • Outfitting allows you to choose what modules to place on your ship.  Each module affects what the ship can do.  
  • Once you've designed and outfitted your ship, you can take it into battle!
  • You can upload and download ship designs from the Steam Workshop

Gameplay basics

  • Choose Super Melee from the main menu and then "single player"
  • Choose what ships you want to take into the battle with you.  You can use your own custom ships here  
  • Optional: Click on the robot to change AI difficulty
  • Press "Click to Battle"
  • Each battle "round" is a one on one match between one ship in your fleet vs. another ship in the enemy fleet. If your ship is destroyed, you pick another ship to keep battling.  The first player to run out of ships in their fleet loses!
  • If your ship takes too much damage, it will be destroyed and you'll have to pick the next ship in your fleet.
  • Using weapons drain your ship's energy.  If you don't have enough energy, the weapon won't fire.

Gameplay Controls

  • W - Thrust
  • A / D - Turn Left and Right
  • Left Mouse - Primary Weapon
  • Right Mouse - Secondary Weapon

You can remap these controls on the options screen.  Fleet Battles also supports controllers.  

Multiplayer

Note: Custom ships are not allowed in multiplayer!

  • Unranked: Play against a random human player.  
  • Ranked: Play against a random human player of similar skill level. 
8,776 views 32 replies
Reply #1 Top

What are the minimum machine specs needed to run the beta?  I tried to start it up on my machine but it's stuck and the hard drive is going nuts.  I fear my machine doesn't meet the minimum.

Reply #2 Top

Quoting spinacci, reply 1

What are the minimum machine specs needed to run the beta?  I tried to start it up on my machine but it's stuck and the hard drive is going nuts.  I fear my machine doesn't meet the minimum.

MINIMUM
Windows 7 / 8 / 10 64-bit, Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 4 GB RAM, Video card with at least 1GB of video memory, 12 GB available space, DirectX Compatible Sound Card.

Reply #3 Top

Playing Super Melee, single player. I can press W to thrust and use the mouse buttons to use the weapons/abilities but the A and D keys do NOT rotate the ship. Kind of hard to play without the ability to rotate. I tried other keys as well and my ship will NOT rotate.

Reply #4 Top

How do I obtain "Star Control Origins - Super Melee Battle BETA" to put into stream?

Reply #5 Top

Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.

Reply #6 Top

Is there a way to submit logs for errors?  In the first 5 minutes of trying it I have crashed twice.  Once on the initial loading screen the second time after a second ship was destroyed.  

 

edit: third time crashing I got an actual report prompt rather than the first two with StarControl_DX11.exe has stopped responding.

Reply #7 Top

Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.

Thank You awetasticadventure,  I had the same problem - spot on, installed, many thanks ... :)

Reply #8 Top

I can't seem to get past the opening screen.  I keep getting a CSV data missing error. Tried to reinstall and still have the problem.

 

Update: Found the culprit! Bitdefender does not recognize the program for some reason. Had to manually allow application access to get around the issue.  If you get this Issue, check your antivirus setting for application access settings. It may be getting detected as a hack attempt.

Reply #9 Top

"CSV data missing error"

I had the same issue. Now fixed. :)

Played a round against the computer to give things a quick try. Ran super-smooth on my i7/gtx1080 (you'd hope so). That was fun! My measured ship won most rounds. I'll give some more time to it this weekend...or maybe sooner.

Reply #11 Top

What's the difference on Steam between Star Control: Origins and Star Control: Origins - Super Melee Battle Beta?

I installed SC: O but it doesn't run in either Dx11 or dx12 mode, shows a .exe error on dx11/12. And I just noticed the download is successful for it by says 0 bytes. What's up with that?

Update: I deleted it and tried reinstalling. This time it was 118mb but trying to play it gives error:

 

Steam - Error 
An error while updating Star Control: Origins (missing executable) : StarControl_DX11.exe
See the Steam suoøort site for more information

My steam runs fine on all other games.

 

 Star Control: Origins - Super Melee Battle Beta downloaded and runs ok. 

No new game able to be selected though.

 

I'm confused over what games I'm getting now as a founder?

Reply #12 Top

Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard, reply 2


Quoting spinacci,

What are the minimum machine specs needed to run the beta?  I tried to start it up on my machine but it's stuck and the hard drive is going nuts.  I fear my machine doesn't meet the minimum.



MINIMUM
Windows 7 / 8 / 10 64-bit, Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 4 GB RAM, Video card with at least 1GB of video memory, 12 GB available space, DirectX Compatible Sound Card.



For anyone else looking for an estimate, with an Win 7 (So DX11), i5-750 (2.66 Ghz) quad core, 16 GB RAM, and Radeon 7700 1GB you'll be able to take a look at the ships in the crafting menu after having them load for a while (after the ship loads it's fairly smooth, though sometimes locks up for a second or two).

Unfortunately for me, that's about it for the moment. I think the overlays in the "New Design" menu and the particle effects in the battle itself were what reduced things to a few frames a second (I'd guess 3-7 frames a second, with some stutter/timeouts as well) and very delayed (5+ seconds at times) responsiveness. Switching from windowed to fullscreen and lowering the resolution I think helped with some slightly improvement after restart, but I could be imagining it too.

The good news is that if you're not running a mostly ancient toaster/potatoe like I am (8 years since CPU release, 5.5 years for GPU), you should be pretty good to go :)
(I think it's probably mostly my GPU holding it back, for anyone that's useful for, just based on taking a look at task manager)


Reply #13 Top

Quoting sonicviz, reply 11

What's the difference on Steam between Star Control: Origins and Star Control: Origins - Super Melee Battle Beta?

I installed SC: O but it doesn't run in either Dx11 or dx12 mode, shows a .exe error on dx11/12. And I just noticed the download is successful for it by says 0 bytes. What's up with that?

Update: I deleted it and tried reinstalling. This time it was 118mb but trying to play it gives error:

 

Steam - Error 

An error while updating Star Control: Origins (missing executable) : StarControl_DX11.exe

See the Steam suoøort site for more information

My steam runs fine on all other games.


 

 Star Control: Origins - Super Melee Battle Beta downloaded and runs ok. 

No new game able to be selected though.

 

I'm confused over what games I'm getting now as a founder?

1) the old beta we were on is the 'mainline' of the game. If you pre-order the game you get this appid which points to th estore page. This appid now has no stuff in it so that people who buy the pre-order don't start getting weird things
 
2) the new beta key is for the NDAed pre-release SuperMeelee beta which doesn't point to the store page and will be removed from your libraries once the SM beta is over
 
You play SMB Beta, currently only SM single player, there were desync issues with multiplayer, and ship crafting is available.
Reply #14 Top

Sigh, I guess that rules me out for the beta.  My machine is not even two years old and I don't even meet the minimum.  Will the requirements be eased for the official release?  If not, I guess I won't be playing it upon release.  Need to muster enough money to get a new machine.

Reply #15 Top

You're not going to want to hear this but I played 2 rounds and deleted your 3.2 gb download.

Controls seemed unresponsive, and gameplay unsatisfying. It seemed like case of randomised dodgems.

Reply #16 Top

Spinnaci - they are working on reducing the current requirements to get it eventually working on a Surface Pro 4. If you have a beta key now, just download it and give it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised. I run it most of the time on a 4 year old laptop and works pretty well (at reduced res).

Reply #17 Top

Quoting sonicviz, reply 15

Controls seemed unresponsive, and gameplay unsatisfying. It seemed like case of randomised dodgems.

Have you tried adjusting the video settings? Gameplay is very sluggish if your graphics can't keep up. Try pulling it down to 1366×768, see how that goes.

Reply #18 Top

Quoting awetasticadventure, reply 5

Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.

I cant find the download section you talk of.

If I go to account I see Profile, Login, Images, Options and Registrations tabs no download section?

Reply #19 Top

Quoting dennylc, reply 3

Playing Super Melee, single player. I can press W to thrust and use the mouse buttons to use the weapons/abilities but the A and D keys do NOT rotate the ship. Kind of hard to play without the ability to rotate. I tried other keys as well and my ship will NOT rotate.

This is very odd.  Are you using a non-standard keyboard (Dvork) or have your language settings set to non-english (some other languages have different keycode mappings).

Reply #20 Top

Quoting jsboshoff, reply 18


Quoting awetasticadventure,

Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.



I cant find the download section you talk of.

If I go to account I see Profile, Login, Images, Options and Registrations tabs no download section?

Are you not seeing this?  

https://www.screencast.com/t/WAGFzaAHd

Also, we're sending out several rounds emails to all founders that should have your key.  Be sure to check your spam folder.

 

Reply #21 Top

Is there controller support?

Reply #22 Top

Quoting pshaw, reply 20


Quoting jsboshoff,






Quoting awetasticadventure,



Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.



I cant find the download section you talk of.

If I go to account I see Profile, Login, Images, Options and Registrations tabs no download section?



Are you not seeing this?  

https://www.screencast.com/t/WAGFzaAHd

Also, we're sending out several rounds emails to all founders that should have your key.  Be sure to check your spam folder.

 

No Im not seeing that but Im probably not clicking on the right place. The picture you show looks like its on the top right, right? If I hover my pointer over my avatar picture nothing happens, if I click it I still dont get that dropdown menu.

Im MOST probably being an idiot, can you draw me a picture :maybe:  

Reply #23 Top

Quoting jsboshoff, reply 22

Quoting pshaw,


Quoting jsboshoff,



Quoting awetasticadventure,



Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.


I cant find the download section you talk of.

If I go to account I see Profile, Login, Images, Options and Registrations tabs no download section?



Are you not seeing this?  

https://www.screencast.com/t/WAGFzaAHd

Also, we're sending out several rounds emails to all founders that should have your key.  Be sure to check your spam folder.

 

No Im not seeing that but Im probably not clicking on the right place. The picture you show looks like its on the top right, right? If I hover my pointer over my avatar picture nothing happens, if I click it I still dont get that dropdown menu.

Im MOST probably being an idiot, can you draw me a picture :maybe:  

Just follow this link

https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products

+1 Loading…
Reply #24 Top

Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard, reply 23


Quoting jsboshoff,




Quoting pshaw,







Quoting jsboshoff,










Quoting awetasticadventure,







Go to your stardock account and download section, copy product key and then add a game to steam via product key.



I cant find the download section you talk of.

If I go to account I see Profile, Login, Images, Options and Registrations tabs no download section?




Are you not seeing this?  

https://www.screencast.com/t/WAGFzaAHd

Also, we're sending out several rounds emails to all founders that should have your key.  Be sure to check your spam folder.

 

No Im not seeing that but Im probably not clicking on the right place. The picture you show looks like its on the top right, right? If I hover my pointer over my avatar picture nothing happens, if I click it I still dont get that dropdown menu.

Im MOST probably being an idiot, can you draw me a picture :maybe:  



Just follow this link

https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products

Thank you!

Reply #25 Top

 

The game is fun but there are definitely some performance issues on my rig. Surprising as I am well above the system requirements.

 

Win 7/i5-6600k/16 Gig RAM/GTX 970

 

Looking forward to an update that will speed things up :)