there was a bug for a while on 32bit systems causing old CPUs to crash but it should be fixed now. Would actually be great if you could double check it works for me, since I haven't been able to get a tester with the old hardware to confirm the fix I made.
I'm very happy to have checked this thread, because I lost all hope that my PC (32-bit OS, 3.1 Ghz dual-core AMD processor) will ever be able to run newer versions of the game again.
But it does! Right after reading what you mentioned up there, I made a separate "StarMade - Latest" folder, and the latest release worked good enough to make me believe that it will be possible to keep updating that copy every time something new is released. Got no startup-crash, about 15 FPS average in easy conditions, and there are still some settings left to be changed for better performance.
So this is like early christmas - so many exciting stuff I wasn't able to try yet