While the team is enjoying their well-earned time off during the holidays, traditionally, our newsletter follows suit.

This gave us some time to go over all the newsletters we published during 2024 and collect the main headlines and highlights discussed in all 50 of them! Like our newsletters, this article is not really an opinionated review but more a summary of the main highlights that took place in 2024.

We filtered out announcements, clarifications, road trips, and event coverage, focusing purely on product launches, services, and shows. The resulting list (with links to the individual weekly issues) can be found at the end of this article.

Below, we’re providing a more structured overview while adding some added color to the main events that took place this past year.

To properly set the stage, however. We will kick things off by describing the state of things at the tail end of 2023.

Checkpoint

If you prefer to get some opinions along with the main high/lowlights, then there is an enjoyable alternative!

On December 28th, the 3rd annual Star Atlas Checkpoint episode was live-streamed, where three DAC leaders reviewed the past year, with additional input provided by Santi (Director of Community & Ecosystem) and expertly hosted by Metaverse Explorer.

If you are looking for more thoughts and insights into all that happened during 2024, this 2.5-hour show is well worth the watch!

Play Video: Star Atlas: Checkpoint #3

December 2023

Before we dive into 2024, let’s set the stage by first describing where we were on December 31st, 2023. Fortunately, the team had launched major updates to both SAGE and UE5 in December, so we don’t have to look far back.

In mid-December, the team launched the much-anticipated SAGE 3D! This was to become the successor to SAGE Labs, which was only meant to be a placeholder. Unfortunately, SAGE 3D lacked some of the newer quality-of-life improvements that had found their way into SAGE Labs. On top of that, the 3D aspect took quite a toll on your computer’s hardware, which meant many found the experience less than satisfactory.

One week later, exactly the last week the team was still at work in 2023, the team released SAGE Labs V2! This was a major improvement over the previous (V1) version of SAGE Labs, as this one came with an interactive map! Until then, there was a map, but it was static and only showed the location of the various Starbases. V2 was a game-changer. It also more or less sealed the fate of SAGE 3D a mere week after that was launched.

Staying true to the team’s penchant for releasing major updates before taking 2 weeks off for the holidays, the team also released UE5 R2.1.9! This set the stage for R2.2. by including:

  • A major extension of the race track, adding a basement level to Volant Station
  • Hover (Combat) Racing vs AI (up until then, you could only race solo)
  • Gunplay with bots (this wasn’t even on the roadmap, so its launch was a major surprise!)
  • Hangar view, offering (cosmetic) ship configuration
  • Crew Studio, offering initial crew (skin) configuration

Team member racing on a 3-monitor setup (December 2023)

Team member racing on a 3-monitor setup (December 2023)

2024 Predictions

As we wrapped up 2023, we made the following product release predictions:

Based on all the information released, our estimation (not confirmed by the team!) for the roadmap is currently as follows:

  • Q1 2024: DAC Platform – Should be January unless prep work for the new year takes too much time
  • Q1 2024: SAGE Starbased – This is for the version without combat. If the team wants to add combat rights away, then we don’t expect to see this before Q2 of the year.
  • Mid 2024: Showroom R2.2 – Massive Multiplayer, Multiplayer Racing/Shooting & Account / Ship Progression
  • Q3 2024: Component/Module/Crew Airdrop – This is tightly coupled to the next item.
  • Q3 2024: Mobile Companion App & Crew Packs – Crew is needed before the mobile app makes sense. It looks like we won’t see both before Q3 of 224

2024

Product Launches

Let’s start by briefly looking at the various launches that took place during 2024, starting with tangible product launches! Note that many features were rolled out over the year, which this segment conveniently ignores. Only the major launches are listed below.

SAGE

The biggest release of the year, arguably, came with Starbased on April 4th! This major expansion to SAGE Labs really brought the game to a level where it started to become truly engaging, and cooperation between players started taking shape. It added features such as Starbase upgrading & upkeep and Loyalty points while also overhauling the ATLAS emissions completely.

Then came a 36-week period with no big releases. That said, many smaller-scale improvements were added to SAGE Labs in that time, such as Hot Wallets, Automatic LP-conversion, and an overhaul to SDU Scanning. And then the next big ticket item arrived: Dawn of the Freighter! This update added Local Markets to SAGE Labs while also bringing back an early favorite of players: Council Request for Resources (RFRs), though in a slightly different way and with a new name: Faction Infrastructure Contracts.

UE5

Right before kicking off their holiday, after a full year of no updates to their flagship Unreal Engine 5 product, the team decided to simply release everything they’ve got! This does mean the release is not yet as polished as the team would like, which is also part of why this officially still does not mark the R2.2 release that the team hyped up in 2023 (though that in itself is no longer a target – as a roadmap shuffle for rid of that release). However, it did bring us some really cool stuff, such as:

  • Multiplayer gunplay modes
  • Multiplayer racing
  • ONI CSS (block out phase)
  • Fleet Command (view only)

The key here really is multiplayer. It is now finally possible to partake in exciting gameplay in UE5 with your friends and guildmates!

Other

The team kicked off the product launches for 2024 in week 4 with the public release of the DAC Platform V0, which is effectively a DAC registration tool. This launch allowed DACs to register themselves and their members to register with them. Though this is the full extent of the features available up to this day, the fact that DAC registration is occurring on-chain means that this information can now be used to create comparison charts and custom DAC tools.

Then, a surprise release arrived suddenly in the middle of the year with the V0 launch of the DAO Governance Platform! Though the team managed to accomplish this only by running the back-end off-chain, it did unlock the Star Atlas DAO’s treasury by allowing POLIS stakers to start proposing & voting on POLIS Improvement Proposals that were seeking funding or attempting to improve or expand the governance process itself.

In Summary

  • Week 5: DAC Platform V0
  • Week 14: SAGE Labs: Starbased
  • Week 28: DAO Governance Platform V0
  • Week 50: Sage Labs: Dawn of the Freighter
  • Week 51: UE5 2.1.96

Star Atlas - EOY Town Hall - Crew Card Selection [UE5]

Star Atlas – EOY Town Hall – Crew Card Selection [UE5]

Asset Launches

During the first 4 months of the year, the team launched four new ships into the market. Most arrived with a (temporary) discount, and one (Ogrika Ruch) arrived with an assortment of skins, honoring 3rd party projects such as Puri and Jupiter.

A much more impactful asset launch was the long-awaited airdrop of Crew members for each ship! A snapshot was taken on August 8th, and airdrops (inventory claims) were distributed on August 12th. Sales of Crew Packs then went live on August 13th!

Originally, the goal was to airdrop all ship Ship Parts Bundles at the same time as the Crew Packs, but as the team had enough difficulty getting the Crew Packs out, this was postponed. The team started by suggesting it would come very soon, but eventually changed their stance and suggested it would simply follow at a later date.

That date suddenly arrived in the week of Christmas, with the team already enjoying their time off! All ship part bundles (claims) were dropped into the (during the snapshot on August 8th) ship-owners’s inventory.

Though these have no use just yet, you will need them to improve the components of the ships further down the line!

In Summary

  • Week 4: Fimbul Sledbarge (ship)
  • Week 6: Ogrika Ruch (ship)
  • Week 14: Calico Shipit (ship)
  • Week 16: Fimbul BYOS Ranger (ship)
  • Week 33: Crew Card Packs (crew)
  • Week 52: Ship Part Bundles (ship parts)

Shows

In 2024, the team launched several new shows and events, such as:

  • Week 23: The Economic Forum — This is a monthly recurring event on the Star Atlas Discord, where Chris and Gareth, with support from the Community Team, look back at the effect of (potential) recent changes in the Star Atlas (Golden Era) economy, and look forward to (potential) new changes they are working on. A must-watch for anyone involved in the economy!
  • Developer Hour — Mid-November 2023 saw the first-ever Developer Hour taking place, where engineers from the team answered questions from community members seeking to develop services and tools for Star Atlas. Mid-July 2024 saw the second (and so far last) of these take place, with John (Xcode) and Brett (Buzzec) taking the lead in shedding more light on the tech side of things. This wasn’t really launched in 2024, but as it happens so rarely, we thought it was worth mentioning.
  • Star Atlas Devs Working on Star Atlas in Unreal Engine — Mid-August, on a random Friday, Chip (Chypto) and Brad (MagicPuncher) just started live-streaming their UE5 development while occasionally answering questions from community members who tuned in. This was a hit, so they have kept on doing it every now and then!
  • Atlas Brew in multiple languages — Beyond the regular Atlas Brews taking place in English on Wednesdays, there are now Altas Brews in multiple languages taking place throughout the week!

star atlas multiplayer stress test 1x1 v1

Star Atlas – Multiplayer Stress Test – January 17th, 2024

Multiplayer Stress Tests

The team hosted two major multiplayer stress tests to test out the MetaGravity tech in their engine. The first one took place in mid-January 2024, with the second one being hosted on April 20th & 21st. In between, leading up to the second test, the team hosted two smaller events to test the new Surge mode that would debut with the second test.

The second one made clear that the Surge game mode was such a success that it fueled another pivot, with the team shifting focus to gunplay modes over multiplayer racing.

IMPACT Summit - Group Photo

IMPACT Summit – Group Photo (team + booths)

IMPACT Summit

The team organized the first-ever Star Atlas conference! This event took place in Singapore in tandem with the Solana Breakpoint conference. It was really due to the Breakpoint organization offering the team this opportunity that they were able to pull it off, and it left everyone wanting more!

The IMPACT Summit was really the main event for Star Atlas this past year. Besides presentations, panels, and fireside chats with team members, two events stood out the most:

The Founders Panel stood out mainly because we finally saw Danny (CPO) in the flesh. Moreover, it was the first time all three co-founders shared a stage together! This had not even happened virtually! While there, they went over the origin story of Star Atlas and the vision they had (and still have) for this game!

Michael’s keynote was highly anticipated and did not disappoint! He showed off cool new stuff the team was working on (a lot was delivered at the end of the year), such as

Finally—what was perhaps the most awe-inspiring segment of the day—the Deep Dive into Galia session showed off a rudimentary first version of the intro of Season 0!

Play Video: Impact Summit 2024 - Star Atlas

Town Halls

There were a total of three Town Halls this past year, one at both the start and end of the year and one in the smack middle:

It can be safely said that the number of yearly town halls has steadily declined over time. Let’s see what 2025 will bring in this regard!

Rainbow Phi Titan ship

Rainbow Phi Titan ship

Titan Ship Sales

Titan ships suddenly started selling in 2024! It all started with a first announcement in week 10, with the GG Collective acquiring the Pearce T1. However, in a matter of mere weeks, the team sold 4 of these ships in rapid succession. It would appear that the first sale triggered the rest, though, in reality, most conversations with the team were ongoing in parallel for quite a while without the parties involved being aware of these other talks.

The exact price at which each Titan ship was sold remains unknown to this day.

  • Week 10 – Pearce T1 — acquired by the GG Collective, led by ForgedInCrypto
  • Week 11 – Rainbow Phi — acquired by Virtuwul
  • Week 14 – Busan The Last Stand mk. VIII — acquired by a group of Aephians, led by Mando
  • Week 15 – Fimbul ECOS Superphoenix — acquired by the Superphoenix DAO, led by Njord

Note that the above list marks the weeks in which the sales were officially announced. Some titans were removed from the marketplace earlier while announcements were still being prepared.

Star Atlas - EOY Town Hall - Galia Project [UE5]

Star Atlas – EOY Town Hall – Galia Project [UE5]

Other Bits

  • CORE Act 2 ended with the release of Episode 12 in week 6 of 2024. During the last Town Hall of the year, it was said that the final Act, Act 3, will kick off in 2025.
  • 2023’s new show, Navigating Star Atlas, where Dominic Vain (Community Manager) interviews team members, saw its 3rd episode go live in Week 7. Unfortunately, no more episodes were launched for the remainder of the year, and it is unknown whether or when this show will continue.
  • The first-ever hackathon, the Naabathon, was organized by the team, with support from the Star Atlas DAO and an assortment of 3rd parties operating on Solana. It was officially announced in week 30, with the deadline for submissions being the end of week 36. During the Impact Summit, the winners were announced.
  • The team launched a new, more interactive roadmap that they promised to update more regularly. So far, updates have been spotty, however. That said, it still provided the best clue of all that is to come and roughly in what order!
  • The Golden Carnival made a surprise return this year, running for 16 weeks, bringing it well into 2025. The team is planning to make this a yearly tradition for now.

Appendix: Newsletter Highlights

Below, you’ll find the complete list of Newsletter issues we published in 2024, along with the highlight from that specific issue. Note that the newsletter takes 2 weeks off in tandem with the team, so you will not find an issue for the first and last week of the year.

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

This completes the weekly highlights for Star Atlas in 2024.

Thanks for reading! From all of us at Aephia Industries to you: We wish you a stellar New Year!

Happy New Year from Aephia

Happy New Year from Aephia