Town Hall Report – May 28th, 2026

Note: If you prefer to watch the 2+-hour live recording (worth it for all the video footage, especially the second half), check out the video here from our friends at StarAtlasTV.

José (Lead Lore & Community) and Michael (CEO) are on stage, chatting about the difficult year so far and the rise of agentic AI as a great multiplier of their productivity.

Unreal Engine 5 – Galia Game Mode

Brad (UE5 Wizard) joins the stage to show off the latest UE5 improvements to the Galia game mode.

You can now skip the intro mission or begin at Nova Starbase (if you already went through the intro once). You’ll start with all the gear you would have gotten along the way, so there is no downside.

Missions

Brad accepts a mission to eliminate a threat on the dark side of a planet. A base here exists, protected by NPC enemies. This demonstrates one of the big improvements: the ability for AI to navigate spherical surfaces.

The base is lit, but outside it’s not, so he lands on a dark planet with near-zero visibility.

When he enters the base, the alarm is triggered because an NPC spotted him (this can be prevented if you are stealthy enough, or at least postponed).

The objective is to kill the boss, who is carrying a Gatling gun and wearing heavy armor. You could sneak in and kill him directly; there is no need to kill the rest of the mobs.

Brad goes on to clear the base and takes on the boss at the end. This earns him 5000 credits for completing the mission. Then a stray mob kills him.

Now, when you die, you spawn back at your ship. There will be limitations to this in the future, but for now, if you have a ship, you’ll spawn there, making gameplay smoother (a nice Quality-of-Life improvement).

Hunting

Next up, Brad demonstrates hunting the Minky Steers, or rather, killing them by the dozens. They now drop biomass (click them to loot).

Star Atlas – Oceans [UE5]

Oceans

For Brad’s final stop, he travels to the beach. The team greatly increased the fidelity of the oceans. He is showing it off while also jumping off his Pearce X4 to “swim” around in the water (no swimming animations, it looks more like jumping through).

This update is going live at the end of the Town Hall! That is to say: it has been submitted to Epic for review, and it will go live as soon as they have completed it (should be a couple of hours).

Q&A

Brad explains that Multiplayer is a special discipline that he does not master well. He may be able to do some light bugfixing, but no guarantees.

Michael further elaborates that Brad is currently a mostly one-man army, spearheading UE5 development. So, we are dependent on him.

z.ink

Jacob (CTO) is next joining to talk about z.ink!

Michael explains they have been working diligently in the background to get the network ready for the genesis event. z.ink is an independent entity with an independent roadmap, but having SAGE C4 ready to launch on mainnet during the network launch is paramount. SAGE C4 is the flagship product, after all.

They are optimistic about the user acquisition and growth potential of z.ink.

Two topics:

• Developer Documentation & Solana Bridge
• Claim Portal

z.ink Bridge

Documentation & Bridge

Jacob takes over. z.ink really did start many years ago, when they had difficulty getting SOL on the Solana devnet. This set off some alarm bells, inspiring them to set up their own cluster, called Atlasnet.

About a year and a half later, priority fees and network fees became an issue on the Solana mainnet. Taking some pages from bigger Web3 games (e.g., Axie Infinity), they realized there is a path to gain greater control over the network and address the fee situation. That is when the real ideation for the z.ink network started.

They started building a public network about a year ago, using much of the tech they had built for their own development network.

Maintaining a healthy blockchain network is a complex endeavor with many moving parts that must work together to succeed. A lot of what they are doing is creating the general-purpose onboarding. They are now at the milestone where they are moving into the public testnet phase. The network, the bridge, and documentation to help with onboarding are now all done.

They are at the point where they want to involve hardware partners, validators, RPCs, etc. If you ever ran hardware on Solana, this is mostly the same. There will be channels to allow for smooth onboarding.

The bridge between was built from the ground up, all homegrown. They wanted to do as little off-chain authoritative stuff as possible, being as decentralized as possible. And it had to be fast.

The bridge will (for testing) connect Atlasnet to the z.ink testnet. There are zAtlas and Zink faucets available to experiment with and move around.

The docs are pretty important to convey the ins and outs of the z.ink network. It contains a lot of information that should help developers experiment with the testnet.

Bridges are the weakest link in blockchain tech. Doing anything off-chain exposes you to a whole different ballgame when it comes to security. But a bridge is a hard requirement for a new blockchain. There has been no independent security audit yet.

They are still discussing a potential bug bounty phase. Bridge transactions could be validated mostly by validators, but the team is still looking into that.

• z.ink documentation: https://docs.z.ink/
• z.ink bridge: https://bridge.z.ink/

Claim Portal

Michael takes over to talk about the Claims Portal (https://z.ink/claims). You can connect your wallet. Currently, the dashboard shows a hypothetical airdrop amount based on a static snapshot taken a day before the Town Hall.

The dashboard shows information at the top that considers all accounts. He explains the mechanics of the vesting scheme. Anyone can claim early, but they pay a fee that will be distributed to those who remain vested.

5% of your total allocation will be claimable immediately. The rest will be slowly unlocked over time (vesting).

Michael covers the information shown on the dashboard and explains that the programs that handle it have been deployed to the testnet.

There is a graph where you can experiment with claiming your allocation at various points in time to see what you would end up with. If other users exit before you, the fees they pay are redistributed pro rata to the remaining users still vesting.

Lastly, Michael shows off an FDV comparison tool, where you can check what your allocation would be worth if it were to mimic the value of one of the tokens you can select on the left. This is just for fun and has no bearing on reality.

Michael prominently adds a disclaimer: The tokens are testnet tokens, and vesting has not yet officially started.

• z.ink claims portal: https://z.ink/claims

Q&A

If you are interested in running a validator, feel free to reach out to Michael. The same goes for potential projects on z.ink. Michael underlines the z.ink allocation earmarked for ecosystem growth.

Michael explains that the zProfile can be used by other projects to target users based on their profile.

When asked about a security audit of the bridge, Michael clarified that it’s very expensive to perform and that the team is not in a position to conduct an official external security audit of the bridge’s functionality.

The team is still planning to host developer sessions in the future, now that the testnet is live.

If it’s absolutely necessary, the team could host their own liquidity pools on the network; the plan is to rely on 3rd parties to introduce and operate these. There will be liquidity pools on Solana for the z.ink token.

When the team has confidence in the C4 roadmap, they are pretty locked in on the z.ink infrastructure side. Once they have confidence in the SAGE C4 PTR, they have a 3-4 month window to execute their go-to-market strategy, talk to market makers, etc.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR

SAGE C4

Danny (CPO) is joining the stage to talk about SAGE C4.

He starts by saying that no studio would ever launch a game like this because everything is available from the start. Everything you can do in the entire game is unlocked from the start. That is a lot to take in.

The team’s engineers created a fully functional game, and Danny has spent the past few months making it feel cohesive and like a game.

Note: C4 stands for Combat, Crafting Habs, Claim Stakes, and Council Rank. This makes it a 4X game (Expansion, Extermination, Exploration, Exploitation).

He is sharing his screen to show the PTR game and how to get into it. No wallet is required; this has been abstracted away, similar to how Holosim operates.

He is showing off character creation, then the map, and what it shows. He explains that the Safe Zone can be expanded.

The interface is really snappy (editor: though not on all computers). He is going over some of the buttons, showing off what they do.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR

He explains that upgrading a Starbase to Tier 5 in SAGE Starbased, the region that spawns in C4, will be controlled by the faction.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Fleet controls]

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Scanning menu]

Warp lanes are overpowered right now, according to Danny. They are super quick.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Attack selection]

Danny is next showing off attacking fleets and starbases. Unfortunately, his fleet attack ran into an issue, but the starbase attack nicely shows off the weapon effects.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Star System Summary]

Next up, he is showing off every main menu option, including fleet creation, fleet stats, ship configurations, inventory, crafting, and claims.

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Crafting Habs]

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Claim Stake management]

Star Atlas – SAGE C4 PTR [Council Rank]

Michael chimes in to share that players won’t have to pay crafting fees when crafting through Claim Stakes.

Danny spent well over an hour showing off SAGE C4 PTR, which is impossible to cover in text. Make sure to check out the recording by StarAtlasTV, or just go and check out the PTR yourself!

There is a Help & Support button in the in-game settings menu (cogwheel) through which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted. AI agents will pick these up on the back end and schedule them.

In response to a question, Michael explains that Cultivation Claims will be a new gameplay loop in C4. The economic loop is that the organic resource output will go into specific recipes for consumables for crew and fleets. An example: A reinforced hull that improves your shields for an hour.

The SAGE C4 PTR is live! https://sage.staratlas.com

Michael does want to add zXP mechanics to the PTR, but this is not live yet.

The team is shifting to PTR, pausing Holosim work. They are also shutting down the zXP earnings mechanic.

Michael, in response to José’s question, summarizes the upcoming Regional Governance mechanic currently being developed, which he initially shared during the Brew last week.

Sale

The team is releasing a limited number of T1-T5 Cultivation Claims, along with two new ships: vzus Arma and Calico Flattop. Pricing is based on OMO pricing – 25%. Crew packs will be rewarded with each of these sales on top (afterward)! This promotion will run for two weeks, or until inventory runs out.

Cultivation Claims will be usable in Faction Claims for now, until C4 is live on mainnet.

Here is the full information on the items for sale and their crew pack bonuses:

Cultivation Claims:

• Tier 1: $15 // 1,337 units // 1x silver 1 crew pack
• Tier 2: $75 // 400 units // 3x gold 1 crew pack
• Tier 3: $274 // 128 units // 1x platinum 5 crew pack
• Tier 4: $639 // 62 units // 2x platinum 5 crew pack + 1x gold 5 crew pack
• Tier 5: $1,970 // 25 units // 6x platinum 5 crew pack

Ships:

• VZUS arma: $81 // 185 units // 3x gold 1 crew pack
• Calico Flattop: $3,050 // 20 units // 12x platinum 5 crew pack

That’s a wrap. Thanks for reading!