Star Trek Online Guide

Star Trek Online is set in the year 2409, thirty years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis.
Each character is captain of their own ship and can choose between three factions:

• Federation
• Klingon
• Romulan

Immerse yourself in sci-fi third person action, tactical space combat and exploring the galaxy in a beautifully rendered world of Star Trek.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Star Trek Online in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Downloaded version of Star Trek Online. Steam and Arc versions may require additional steps.

Note: March 2017 Perfect World Entertainment ended support for Windows XP and Direct X 9. This guide no longer applies until we can pursue more testing in Wine.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.8
Wine: 1.7.43

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.7.43
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.43 is installed and you can close this window

Download Star Trek Online Client

Go To: http://download.perfectworld.com/sto/star_trek_setup.exe
Save the star_trek_setup.exe in a folder on your desktop

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: startrekonline
Click Next

Check all three:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.7.43
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1920x1080 (or enter the resolution of your Linux desktop)
Click OK

Installing Packages (Components, Libraries, DLL's)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Installing Star Trek Online

Click Browse

Select the star_trek_setup.exe from your desktop folder
Click Open

Click Next again

Click OK

Click Next

Click "I Agree"

Click Next

Uncheck "Create a desktop icon"
Click Install

Uncheck "Launch Star Trek Online"
Click Finish

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "Star Trek Online.exe
Click Next

Click Next again

Select "I don't want to make another shortcut"
Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select "Star Trek Online"
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine Version: 1.7.43

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine, click the down-arrow to select other versions of Wine

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching Star Trek Online

Select Star Trek Online
Click Run

Launcher Update

Log in with your account credentials (or register)

Star Trek Online Launcher will download and patch the entire game: 9 Gigabytes

Click Engage

Cryptic Loading Screen
When you launch Star Trek Online the first time, you will have to wait about 15-20 minutes
After that it launches fairly quick

Login Again
Sometimes the login will fail and you have to login again

Optimization

Click Options

Display Tab
Adjust windowed or fullscreen
Adjust refresh rate and antialiasing

Graphics Tab
Use Render Quality and Graphics Detail sliders to adjust graphics
Or manually set:

• Screen
• Detail
• Effects
• Lights

Advanced Tab
More settings to increase/decrease performance

Rule of Thumb
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
Star Trek Online ran really well on my Geforce 550 Ti. I rarely had any issues with loading, controls or diplay settings. The game actually pre-set everything to High and the game is beautiful.
Every once in a while the mouse would not turn your character/ship completely around, but a quick right-click fixes it.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

Warning last I knew towns was still in beta. That's why I only have the free demo. I want to wait for the beta to end before deciding to buy.

Lord of The Rings Online seems to run under Linux. I suggest you check wine HQ. Civ 5 and Civ 4 work. Simcity 2013 runs but EA's Origin runs flaky under wine, see my posts on POL forums. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim works too. I use The steam version of all of them except for Simcity which uses Origin.

 

Ah a bit Steam guy... I have a love/hate relationship with Steam because its such a cool place to download & launch your games, but the stinking updates drive me nuts. Specially when I have 6 gaming computers for LAN parties. Pain pain pain!
I have yet to install Skyrim and I've had it since December 2012. What kind of hardware are you using for it to run?

 

Not very good. I suspect it will look a lot better if I can ever save enough for that new desktop that I want. Right now I'm stuck with this lap top multimedia machine from HP. 4G ram, 1.5 t and 300 M HDs, Kubuntu 13.04, SRS Premium sound system (Good but not great, sounds better with audio puls than Windows), 12M/s down AT&T Uverse Elite DSL and Intle GMA 45 (mediocre to poor FPS).

 

Whoa, I'm surprised Skyrim ran at all.

 

This is better than most laptops. My desktop has a broken sound port. My desktop is quite a few years older than my laptop. My laptop is 2009 and my desktop is 2006.

 

Not very good. I suspect it will look a lot better if I can ever save enough for that new desktop that I want. Right now I'm stuck with this lap top multimedia machine from HP. 4G ram, 1.5 t and 300 M HDs, Kubuntu 13.04, SRS Premium sound system (Good but not great, sounds better with audio puls than Windows), 12M/s down AT&T Uverse Elite DSL and Intle GMA 45 (mediocre to poor FPS).

Oops that's 300 G not M.

 

If it works, it works. I am using my newest desktop with GeForce 550 Ti and an SSD drive just for testing games.
I wanted to prove that modern hardware can run most games in Linux.
It that legacy hardware people are having problems with...

 

I read in Linux Journal once that some guy got the Linux 2.0 kernel to run on a 2nd generation Commodore 64. Didn't that come out in 1986 or so? The Linux 1.0 kernel came out in 1993. I'd like to see Windows do that. Ya right.

 

Man, my list of things Linux can do that Windows can't is growing every day.
The main reason most people stick with Windows is familiarity and compatibility. Thats about it. Once people start seeing that Linux has a lot of compatibility, they will only have to get over the old XP interfaces.
Hell they are doing it now with Win 8. Everyone's freaking out because the interface isn't familiar. So all Microsoft has to do is kill the compatibility with legacy programs and Linux is in the picture!

 

Microsoft seems to be suffering from an acute case of Windows 8 self destruction idis. Even the new Xboxone is headed for disaster from what I saw and head at E3. Sony won the public opion award without much effort even though Sony’s game presentation was very bad.

 

Microsoft seems to continue doing what they do best: coming too late to the party after copying someone else and then failing.
They can't learn a lesson from themselves.
I admit, the only reason I stick with Windows is because of games. This is starting to change with PlayOnLinux.

 

Microsoft seems to continue doing what they do best: coming too late to the party after copying someone else and then failing.
They can't learn a lesson from themselves.
I admit, the only reason I stick with Windows is because of games. This is starting to change with PlayOnLinux.

Me too. The only reason I can see for the continued existence of Windows is to play Uncharted Water's but even then it's only a matter of time until I get that game to work from POL.

 

Ooh, I havn't played that one. Looks really good!
For me its Just Cause 2, only works with Direct X 10 and Wine isn't so good with 10 yet.

 

Any idea whether this PlayOnLinux command - POL_Download "$GAME_URL/$SETUP_FILE" "" - can be modified to use the VD's browser instead of the system browser?

 

I have no idea... thats definitely a question for the PlayOnLinux forum. Let me know what you find out.

 

Hi,

I'm new here, and I followed your tutorial after being a bit confused with ARC software....After half a dozen of tries, I installed and patched STO successfully.

Then, I launched the game...First, the black cryptic loading screen...It loaded OK...Then the green Romula legacy loading screen...And nothing happens. It's loading for the last 15minutes, I believe, on one of my 4 ubuntu desktops.

Did I missed something ? I EXACTLY followed your tutorial. I don't understand.

Any help will be very appreciated...Thank you !

 

I cannot edit my message, sorry for the double post : it seems that finally the game launched. More than 15minutes blocked on green romulan loading screen ? Is it normal ?

thank

 

No problem, you can't edit your posts until you have 10 or more posts.
Anyways, I'm assuming the game completely downloaded correct?

Did you install IE8 and Service Pack 3? Those are important because the Cryptic login screen requires IE8 and won't launch without it.
I have a feeling that is the problem, its just a black screen because the next step is a login screen and its not finding the proper browser.

 

I have no idea... thats definitely a question for the PlayOnLinux forum. Let me know what you find out.

They said it uses something in python to download stuff from the Internet. I still can't figure out how to do it. Maybe with a wine command but they probably want POL commands in a POL script.

 

It would be cool if the devs could add Firefox to the list of libraries and make it the default browser for us.