Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #159

Welcome to our 159th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.

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This past week saw a heavy focus on Local Markets and RFRs, with both the Atlas Brew and Economic Forum focusing on these upcoming features. New alpha was also shared, which you can read all about below! In addition, The Golden Carnival wrapped up the fifth week of drawings, with the sixth week having started. And then, there are some brand new sneak peeks to wrap things up!

Before we kick things off, a heads-up: Though the team has not yet confirmed a date, it looks like an end-of-year, Town Hall-like event (no expected releases) will take place shortly before the team starts their yearly 2-week X-mas holiday!

Economic Forum #7

During the 7th Economic Forum, Chris (Head of Game Economy) and Gareth (Econ Analyst Ninja King) discussed several topics, including the recent SDU change. Based on preliminary statistics, Chris shared that the change had exactly the intended effect, as evidenced by the following chart (a considerable reduction in Solana transactions):

Star Atlas – Econ Forum #7 – Scanning Update

The Econ team also announced the upcoming launch of their homegrown Econ dashboard. The dashboard will be comprised of 4 pages, focused on:

• Page 1: Starbased user data
• Page 2: Starbased ATLAS Emissions data
• Page 3: Starbased Production and Consumption data
• Page 4: Starbased Warping data

It will be part of the DAO website and launch later this month!

Local Markets

During the Atlas Brew this past week, the Community team shared some screenshots and information on the soon-to-be-released Local Market feature for SAGE Starbased.

The Local Marketplace will be accessible on all Starbases through the Local Marketplace option in the Starbases Controls. The interface will look like the below screenshot (here for ONI-2):

SAGE – Starbased – Local Markets: Start screen

This screen will open on a summary of available resource orders, where players can immediately execute and fill a buy/sell order—more importantly, multiple orders—in one go!

Clicking on any resource in the bar to the left will bring forward the market for that resource. Here is a toggle available to switch between sellers and buyers (both sides of the market), and you can sell or buy goods:

SAGE – Starbased – Local Markets: Ammunition Market [sell side]

You can also create orders of your own through the “Create an Item Order” button at the bottom. This will spawn a popup window where you can enter the details, such as can be seen in the screenshot below:

SAGE – Starbased – Local Markets: Creating a new buy order

Local Markets will soon go live for the 48 non-CSS Starbases (if the Community team is to be believed)!

Request For Resources

During the 7th Economic Forum, the Econ duo shared new alpha on the RFR mechanics that will come online alongside the Local Markets.

Chris shared that the team may rename the RFR in-game. He is currently brainstorming with José (Chief Lore Noot), and one of the options they are considering is Faction Supplies.

Star Atlas – Econ Forum #7 – RFR Update

The plan is to launch with a custom recipe per Faction, tailored to that Faction. The team is considering later further expanding on this and having different recipes even within a single Faction.

Contrary to an earlier version of these plans, RFRs will be craftable at all Starbases. However, there will only be buy orders at 3 Starbases per Faction, which will be randomly picked from a list of 6 Starbases (per Faction). Chris mentioned, as an example, a scenario where every week the RFR Buy-orders would transition to 3 randomly chosen Starbases (with a chance of the same Starbase getting a buy order twice—or even multiple times—in a row).

In selecting the 6 Starbases per faction for this purpose, Chris used distance from the CSS as the key metric to balance between Factions. He shared his calculations below:

Star Atlas – Econ Forum #7 – Determining RFR buy order locations

This feature will launch alongside local markets, and both new additions to SAGE seem to be launching very soon!

Star Atlas – Golden Carnival 2024 – Schedule

Golden Carnival

Last week saw the fifth week of the Golden Carnival, during which the Pearce and Calico prize pool returned. A total of 3,210,859 tickets were submitted, close to double the number of tickets submitted during the previous Pearce & Calico week (the first).

Week 6 has meanwhile started, marking the return of the Busan & Ogrika week! The in-lore introduction is as follows:

The second cycle of the Golden Carnival blazes onward, where destiny and daring intertwine beneath the stars. House Busan’s revered engineers have returned, unveiling some of the jewels of the ONI Consortium. Dare to submit your Golden Tickets and trust in the cosmic currents—by night’s end, a few fortunate Captains may find these formidable ships proudly docked in their hangars.

Governance

This past week, the Council hosted a one-hour “workshop” with the community members behind the Gamescom meetup proposal. If you are interested in creating a PIP, then it is definitely worth listening to the event recording!

Furthermore, a pinned introduction post with guidelines and tips for getting started was added to the #pip-ideas channel.

Sneak Peeks

Right before publication, the fine folks at RenderDock Studio decided to release a flurry of awesome concepts for the Floyd Liner, the ship everyone gets to fly for free in the Unreal Engine Showroom!

Feast your eyes on the shots below, but do check out their Art Station for more (including a few animations)!

Star Atlas – Floyd Liner – Ship Interior [by RenderDock Studio]

Star Atlas – Floyd Liner – Missile Launcher (Interior) [by RenderDock Studio]

Star Atlas – Floyd Liner – Kitchen (Interior) [by RenderDock Studio]

Star Atlas – Floyd Liner – Rocket [by RenderDock Studio]

That is it for this week! Thanks for reading!