The NDA is from the playable early version of the game that was available for people who pre-ordered. If you people who are screeching about it had read the whole thing (can't show photos or videos "until the product enters public beta", as well as "© 2017"), you might have figured out that it's just a leftover bit of text that can be safely ignored.

In other words, the NDA (by its own terms) presumably ended long ago, and certainly ended the moment the game released.

Meanwhile on Steam : https://steamcommunity.com/app/271260/reviews/?browsefilter=toprated&snr=1_5_reviews_

Full Galaxy support. Nice.

If there is any combat, I hope it is done better than in SC3. It can be realized in another way but it must work well. Another thing I expect from this is a decent story.

This kinda makes me *FRUMPLE* Not a happy *CAMPER*

It seems a good time to draw some attention to this nice page: https://sourceforge.net/projects/urquanmastershd/

mmmmm???? i clicked on the link and got a PDF :

i opened it and read it , isnt this text a little late ? overdue or whatever they call it ? a little late cause google for the title and how many screenshots and videos do you want ?
can someone explain why this pdf is added while the net is crawling with videos and images already. ≖‿≖

If one looks into the details of this, it's hard to ignore the timing and lack of subtlety on the part of the original two developers (not publisher, by the way).

Long story vaguely, semi-short so far, Stardock buys Star Control from Atari, going through all the processes to get it, while the original developers, who might have beef with that, let it slide and occur without their interference, regardless of the circumstances involving Atari owning Star Control properly or not. Atari being Atari and all that.

Then Stardock offers to sell Star Control to the original developers, who turn it down amiably.

Stardock then starts to make their own game, offering to bring the original developers into it, who turn it down amiably.

Stardock makes the game up through to a beta version, and then the original developers announce their own game without the "Star Control" name in the title to avoid legal trouble with Stardock. Stardock offers something akin to moral support to the original devs and basically say that it's a great time for Star Control fans to get two games instead of one.

The media gets a hold of news that the original devs are making a new game and start promoting it as the next proper Star Control. Stardock is understandably a little annoyed with this and gets legal about it to protect their interests. The original devs fire back with claims that Star Control was theirs all along out of the blue, despite letting things progress to this point and going along with the idea that they don't own it as they've avoided using it in their own title up until this point.

A lot of this and more can be found in their legal documents. The original devs reach with at least a few of their arguments, for instance calling out Stardock's CEO for daring to recreate original Star Control aliens in his own personal recreational gameplay of Galactic Cvilizations, using that game's own easily moddable features. You know, the kind of thing many of us have done in games. This and others are from emails they're released showcasing his fanboyisms over the work they did in the original Star Control games.

And then, as quoted above, there's now a crowdfunding for the original devs' legal battle against Stardock. Frankly, they shouldn't have needed to start a crowdfunding campaign for a two million dollar goal if they interfered early on, assuming they believed that Star Control was already completely theirs at the time, and/or if they got involved and bought whatever it was Atari was selling to remove all doubts.

Instead, they let it get to this point, and it more than feels like they tried to cash in on Stardock actually doing something with Star Control by announcing a game they haven't even apparently begun work on.

I was originally disappointed in both parties for the lot of this (and, in addition, who isn't disappointed with Atari, nowadays?) and wanted both games to happen. Now I'm not sure one of those games was ever really going to happen, and I feel more than a little disappointment for the original devs' behavior and choice of timing. If they really believed what they're arguing now, they should have tried to stop this long ago before it got to this point.

Obviously, it's up to the courts to decide where it all falls, but all the stuff I've seen so far suggests that Stardock is the one with the stronger case as they've gone through all the steps, even if Atari was in the wrong in selling Star Control in the first place, as the original devs basically agreed to it by not doing anything about it until now. Who knows, though?

At the least, there's an actually new Star Control game out now, and it's apparently pretty good.

Hm, I was reading a reddit thread where Draginol (CEO of Stardock if I assume correctly) posted. Some more recent information (under a month ago).

I mean, you don't need mods to get the Ur-Quan or the Kor-Ah ... That's pretty blatantly the Drengin and Korath. Not even subtle with the last bit.

I do appreciate the rest of your post, this isn't something I've been following closely and there's a lot of sound and fury with all this. Nice to see a play by play.

This sounds like a completely shit behavior from original creators, but nevertheless, NDA is a "fuck you, customer" type of behavior. No idea why it was there since there was no open beta here, so I'm still going to be caucious.

I took it for a quick spin.
Combat feels much better than in SC3, but that is a very, very low bar to clear.

Is it the same combat system?

Yes.
1vs1 melee.
There seem to be different "arenas" where those take place, including some that have more than 1 gravitational bodies.