A New Year’s message to Aephia Industries & the wider Star Atlas community.
2025 was, in many ways, a lackluster year for both Star Atlas (and the broader crypto market).
There was visible progress in UE5. Gunplay, racing, and dogfighting matured into experiences that are not only functional but genuinely enjoyable. We also saw the first real economic crossover between UE5 and SAGE with the introduction of the INK resource, an important step, even if a small one.
SAGE itself saw no meaningful updates. Combined with a steadily declining ATLAS token, this made it harder not just to earn but to enjoy playing. For many, SAGE became something to check in on rather than something to look forward to, which has been sad to see.
Holosim arrived unexpectedly: a free-to-play, SAGE-like experience that, on paper, should have been a win. In practice, it struggled under the weight of persistent synchronisation issues, a problem the team has been fighting in various forms since the first version of the Galactic Marketplace launched.
Star Atlas Season 0: Alive
Following the strong presentation at the IMPACT Summit in Singapore, communication about Season 0 simply stopped. This planned milestone will mark the first iteration of the UE5 game to deliver a complete game experience. It will come to serve as the baseline for future seasons to expand and add content.
Season 0 will put players in the middle of a large-scale Tufa invasion of Ioki (the Ustur homeworld), the Council of Peace coming to its aid, combat on space stations and on the ground, and the sense of a galaxy in conflict. It’s hard not to feel impatient, but it’s increasingly clear that many of the systems currently in development are prerequisites for delivering this experience as well as possible. This may take longer than most of us expected, or hoped.
That’s the uncomfortable part. That was 2025.
But now it’s 2026, and our story continues.
SAGE C4
C4 is not expected before late March, and more realistically, April. It is essentially a complete overhaul of SAGE that materially changes how the game functions. It comes with some great updates, such as:
- A Cambrian explosion of resources, recipes, and (ship) components to craft — This will encourage specialization and add a new dimension (if not multiple) to the challenge of being as efficient as one can be. This will also make teamwork more appealing (or even essential), and we’d love to see that happen here at Aephia!
- Combat — We are not a combat-focused guild, but we consider combat to be essential:
- It raises the stakes and thereby makes gameplay more exciting and fun
- It introduces the single most important economic sink: asset destruction (initially limited to components and repair costs)
- It creates sustained demand for ship components, which we plan to manufacture collectively
- A much larger galaxy and Claim Stakes — The first of two planned galaxy expansions arrives (the second will likely be the HRZ) alongside the introduction of Claim Stakes. This will allow us to claim our corner of the galaxy, build out our supply lines & production pipelines, and (last but not least) defenses.
- Near-zero transaction costs via z.ink — This changes the cost structure of playing SAGE entirely and enables us to re-engage smaller players, something that has become increasingly difficult these past two years.
- A new iteration of StarComm (V3) — This should once, and hopefully for all, rid us of the UI-synchronization issues we have been encountering near-daily.
The PTR could go live in February (January if we’re very lucky), giving us the first opportunity to test these systems in practice rather than through theorycrafting (using the SAGE Editor Suite & our own expansion).
Holosim — Chapter 2
Holosim Chapter 2 is planned as the first feature to go live this year, with a target date of January 2026.
We will likely have to see it to believe it, but with some luck, the synchronisation bugs will be a thing of the past with the introduction of the next Chapter of (the first Season) of Holosim.
The goals and gameplay elements in this second chapter differ from those in the previous chapter and may feel experimental. This is by design. Allowing the team to experiment here will keep the experience fresh across multiple chapters and seasons. Still, more importantly, these experiences provide valuable insights that may inform the future development of the main game.
![Star Atlas - Calico [Concept Art]](https://assets.aephia.com/wp-assets/d4e05ccbb81aee98b5808dfffab9a0475ba9e552370f165a4e741ea6311159ef.jpg)
Star Atlas – Calico [Concept Art]
UE5–SAGE Convergence
The finalized Siege mode is a critical building block. Objective-based, cooperative gameplay is foundational to any MMO. Without shared goals and contested outcomes, there is no persistent world, only parallel single-player activities.
Once the objective-based update to Siege is in place, the team plans to move on to Conquest mode. If done well, this could become one of the most compelling modes Star Atlas has to offer: combined-arms combat across ground, air, and space, on foot and in ships, reminiscent of Battlefield or Star Wars Battlefront.
The next step — ambitious and potentially not a 2026 delivery — is to unlock new Conquest games directly through SAGE C4. In that model, territorial control would not be resolved purely through SAGE mechanics. Once outer defences fall, a Conquest instance opens in UE5, and the final fight happens there.
For players focused solely on SAGE today, this may sound impractical or even disruptive, especially for those without hardware capable of running UE5. But this direction aligns perfectly with another core system the team is developing: Fleet Command.
When Fleet Command allows SAGE C4 to be played directly in the UE5 game client, the transition from (top-down) strategic play to direct (1st/3rd person) control will be seamless (eventually). Managing a fleet one moment, then taking command of a single ship, perhaps ending up fighting on foot, not as separate modes, but as one seamless gameplay experience.
At that point, when random players — who happen to be in that part of the galaxy, either in their ship, or on foot — can organically join those Conquest battles, we are getting very close to the grand-strategy MMO many of us are here for.
Conquest is also exactly what would make Season 0 a success: Capturing space stations in orbit that power Ioki’s planet-wide shield, fighting on foot on Ioki’s surface, switching across multiple layers of the battlefield, and being able to respond dynamically as the situation evolves.
Note: that there are additional building blocks required for Season 0, such as capable NPC routines that can partake in these Conquest-like game modes, plus, of course, fully realised locations such as Ioki itself. But the direction is becoming clearer!
Star Atlas – Galia Single-player Campaign [In-game]
The MMORPG Layer
Just before Christmas, we received a small, playable glimpse of the MMORPG layer.
It was buggy, single-player, and far from finished, but… it was also fun! For the first time, we saw narrative-driven, mission-based gameplay in the UE5 game: exploring the galaxy as your avatar, taking part in battles with real stakes, buying and selling equipment, and making a dent in the universe.
This is a part of Star Atlas that many people are eagerly awaiting. Being able to jump into this sliver of gameplay, even in its earliest form, was a great reminder (and proof to naysayers) that Star Atlas will be more than “just” a grand strategy game.
Z.ink – Participate in the Star Atlas ecosystem and earn zXP
And the Rest
For the sake of completeness, let’s also touch upon some of the other aspects that make up the Star Atlas ecosystem.
Z.ink
We can’t discuss 2026 without mentioning z.ink. Beyond significantly reducing the fee component of SAGE players’ costs, a clear secondary benefit to the Star Atlas ecosystem is that it will help grow our player base through four planned airdrop campaigns — something the game badly needs. The first began just before Christmas and runs through at least mid-March. It’s not too late to join, so get going today if you haven’t already!
Fleet Command
I mentioned Fleet Command briefly before, and it is currently unclear where the team is on this. It seems most SAGE players don’t see a need for this, though it’s essential to bring it into UE5 at some point, as it fuels the Grand Strategy component. The question is more about timing.
At the Crossroads event in Istanbul in May 2024, Michael (CEO) announced Fleet Command on stage, indicating the beta would launch in Q3 of that year. After the IMPACT Summit in September of that year (though unbeknownst to us at the time), the team shifted its focus to gunplay and racing in UE5, while also (potentially a little later) deciding to postpone Fleet Command until after SAGE C4 (which was conceived at that time).
After the Summer Town Halls, Michael shared that the majority of the UE5 team would now shift back to work on Fleet Command, but it appears this may not have come to pass, given the progress made on the other UE5 game modes.
For now, we will simply have to wait and see when we’ll be able to participate in SAGE within the UE5 client.
CORE
After a full year without a single CORE issue delivered, Act 3 is launching this month! The first of these six issues will go on sale in January 2026.
For those unaware, CORE can always be read for free. But you can choose to acquire collectible NFT covers, which (when you have a full set) you will be able to exchange for a physical copy in the future.
What This Means for Aephia
During our last Council of Peace Assembly (COPA) presentation, we outlined our plans to begin focusing on crafting Ship Component configurations. Since then, we’ve learned that many more ships will become redeemable over the course of this year. Together, these two developments open up a wide range of viable paths once the SAGE C4 update goes live.
There will not be a single “correct” approach, and that’s a good thing. We look forward to iterating on our production pipelines with all of you and discovering what works best in practice.
A large part of this effort will be fleshing out roles, defining production focus, testing our hypotheses, and, importantly, onboarding. The Star Atlas community has been steadily contracting since the 2021 hype cycle, and most guilds, Aephia Industries included, have felt that impact.
By taking our focus on Economic Strategy to the next level with SAGE C4, we aim to attract new players and give former members a reason to take another look. This is not about growth for its own sake.
With a significantly expanded galaxy, scale becomes a practical requirement: more participants allow for deeper specialisation, more resilient production pipelines, and a level of coordination that simply isn’t possible at smaller sizes. These are the very things Aephia has been built around since day one.
In Closing
What has carried Aephia through the past year is not momentum, but commitment to each other and to the goals we set for ourselves from the very beginning.
Thank you for being part of a community that values cooperation, shared purpose, constructive discussions, clear thinking, and building for the long term.
Here’s to a steady, constructive, and — cautiously — hopeful 2026! 🥂
