Stardock announced that the second Star Control: Origins Fleet Battles beta is available now. The beta is accessible to anyone who pre-ordered Star Control: Origins (through the official website or Steam), as well as those who've won a beta code from our previous giveaway.
Star Control: Origins is due to launch later this year for PC.
Top Changes in Beta 2New Ships
Greegrox Swarm
They might look squishy, but these space jellyfish are not to be underestimated! Each ship within their swarm represents a single unit of crew that fires an individual microbolt. Did we mention that the swarm can heal itself, too? They must go through a lot of band-aids…Mu’Kay Grasper
Don’t make them ink! It gets messy. This giant squid-ship can throw down ink blobs that both damages and sucks energy from their enemies. Unlike most other ships, the Mu'Kay don’t use any projectile weaponry - they rely on getting up close and crushing their opponent with their ship’s tentacles.Lexite Interceptor
Be careful with these guys - they’re hardy! This fast-moving ship has “dual-shot” blasters and an extremely tough-to-penetrate shield. When the shields are engaged, the ship is pretty much invincible - but, it drains energy. You’ll have to time your attacks carefully in order to achieve victory against them.New Weapon Components
- Heal: Restores lost crew. Does that make them zombies, or..?
- Death Ray: The name explains itself. You probably don’t want to get hit with this one.
- Dual Shot: Fires a fast double shot. Hey, two for the price of one!
- Ink Blob: Drops an inky blob that drains energy and crew. Clean-up on aisle three!
- Shield: Holding down a button makes you invincible... until you run out of energy. Suggestion? Don’t run out of energy.
Custom Matches
First things first: you can now use your own custom ships in multiplayer mode. Woo-hoo! You can also customize your battle experience with the following knobs and dials:
- Enable custom ships in multiplayer
- Create a private, password protected lobby for multiplayer
- Set the arena size
- Adjust the number of asteroids, wormholes, and ion storms
- Adjust the Fleet max size
- Choose from one of three different arena maps
Other Improvements
We’ve made a lot of other tweaks and adjustments to Fleet Battles in order to continue bringing you the best experience! Beta 2 includes things like:
- Pilot Graphics - Many ships now have custom animations for their pilots. More will be coming later!
- High-Resolution UI - Fonts and UI graphics now look better on high res displays.
- Balance Updates - Almost all of the ships and weapons have been updated for a superior experience.
- Improved Performance - Substantial improvements have been made to memory use and visual effect performance.
