Welcome to our 167th 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.
Last week was an action-packed one! StarComm V2 went live in SAGE—though not without its challenges, as many players experienced disruptions. Meanwhile, the team shared their vision for the Atlas Locker Addendum, sparking community discussions, and announced the upcoming launch of the MVP of Fleet Rentals on March 5th!
On top of that, the first Community-created PIP could become available for voting very soon, marking an exciting milestone. Michael (CEO) also weighed in with insights on C4 and Fleet Command, while the Golden Carnival enters its final stretch!
Let’s dive right in!
Star Atlas (UE5) – Upgraded Planetary Textures
SAGE – StarComm V2
Last week Monday, the team replaced the last vestiges of StarComm V1 with the new V2 in SAGE Labs. This long-awaited upgrade promises to drastically improve the robustness of the game’s interaction with the blockchain. However, its launch was overshadowed by myriad issues that were introduced to the game along with it.
The team has been working hard to fix those issues, but as of last Friday, the following known issues still exist:
SAGE Current Issues:
- Missing Ships After Fleet Disbanding
- Missing POLIS Rewards in ATLAS Locker
- Starbase Upgrade Timer Issue: Incorrect remaining time prevents users from installing upgrades
- SAGE marketplace quick sell using the worst order instead of the best
Issues fixed since launch:
- Missing Order in Marketplace
- “Update Crew” Popup: Blocking affected users from accessing Based
- Missing Crafting Instance
- Infinite loading in the port of entry, which was preventing users from withdrawing their crew
- Missing Workshop Action Button in Staff Crafting Projects, which was preventing users from claiming or abandoning their craft
Once the last remaining issues have been resolved, the community should be able to experience first-hand the improvements that StarComm V2 brings.
Star Atlas – Fleet Rentals
SAGE – Fleet Rentals
The team posted a new Medium article last Friday, announcing the launch of the MVP of Fleet Rentals on March 5th.
Fleet Rentals allows SAGE players to rent out one of their fleets “as is” to other players in their Faction. This provides a new avenue for players to generate a mostly passive income stream.
Contrary to so-called scholarships (popularized by games such as Axie Infinity), Fleet Rentals do not provide a Free-to-play experience. The person who rents the fleet will choose the duration and then has to lock the total costs for that up-front. Though they are able to stop the contract earlier, this can only be done after the first 24 hours have passed (returning the surplus ATLAS that was locked).
Before being able to rent out a fleet, it needs to be fully staffed by crew members. On the other hand, supplying Fuel, Ammo, and anything else is entirely optional. Whatever is present on board the fleet will be fully available to the person renting it from the owner.
The team chose not to use “magic” to make fleet rentals function. One example of this is that fleets will not change location unless the owner (before rental) or the person renting the fleet (while renting) moves it. If a person rents a fleet offered in MRZ-22, then that is where the fleet will be located at the start of the rental period. And if the rental contract expires and the fleet is somewhere in deep space, then that is where the fleet will be afterward.
Similarly, cargo does not magically move. If you lose control of a rented fleet, its cargo is now owned by the original owner.
Being an MVP, there are still a lot of rough edges that will hopefully be resolved over time. Owners can’t ask for a fixed one-time fee to cover R4, such as Fuel. This means you have to cover these costs in the rental price (or not provide any R4), knowing that people can rent it for 24 hours only. Similarly, your fleet could be returned to you somewhere in deep space without enough Fuel to make it back to a Starbase owned by your Faction (forcing you to self-destruct it).
Additionally, at this point in time, a fleet damaged in combat would be returned in a damaged state. Fortunately, there is still time before combat arrives, and hopefully, the team can find a solution for this. Factoring in the repair cost likely would inflate the rent price to levels where the only logical thing to do for those renting a fleet is to use it as cannon fodder in combat.
Fortunately, the team plans to address (at least some of) the above over time. We recommend you check out the announcement for more information!
Star Atlas – Atlas Locker Addendum
Atlas Locker Addendum
On Thursday, the team released the long-awaited document detailing new ideas for the Atlas Locker, the Atlas Locker Addendum! Prior to that, on Wednesday during the Atlas Brew, Michael was on to talk about the various addenda that are included in this document. If you want to learn more about these, definitely check out the recording!
The document proposes 11 new additions to the current benefits (market sale fee reduction & POLIS). We list these below in the same order (A1 – A11) as they appear in the document:
- Introduction of 2 new Tiers—A new starting tier and a new tier before the last one to reduce the gap between the last two tiers.
- Crafting Discounts (SAGE/Fleet Command)—Up to 22.5% discount on the crafting fee
- Reduced Fleet Respawn timer—Up to 50% reduction of in-game respawn time
- Exclusive NPC Merchants—Tier-based access to exclusive items & get a slightly better price when selling to NPC merchants.
- Locker Specific Recipes—Tier-based access to exclusive recipes such as better versions of existing recipes (e.g., Fuel2) and cosmetics
- SAGE AI Assistant—Get access to an AI assistant that can help you manage fleets, mining, crafting, and more future game features.
- Blockchain Fee Subsidies (DAO approval required)—Get a daily subsidy (SOL) to alleviate your on-chain transaction fees
- Lower Resource Consumption (Faction Fleet – Near to mid-term benefit only)—Up to 50% reduction in R4 input materials required for fleet upkeep
- Ship Lending Liquidity—ATMTA will rent out unsold (primary) ship inventory up to the total value locked in the ATLAS Locker. Earnings are distributed to locker participants based on their ATLAS locked.
- Fleet Rental Fee Discount—Up to 30% discount on the rental fee (itself 10% of the rental price)
- ATLAS Locker Skill Tree—Complete reenvisioning of all Atlas Locker benefits. This will introduce an upgrade tree for which points can be earned by locking more ATLAS, in-game achievements, or outright buying them.
Some of the above are applicable today (A1, A2, A3, A8), but most of them will become applicable over time (starting with A10 & A9, followed by A4, A5 & A6). The one related to Blockchain Fee Subsidies (A7) is dependent on DAO approval, in other words, approval through a Polis Improvement Proposal (PIP). The reason is that this subsidy would be paid for by the DAO, not by the team.
The last one (A11) is completely overhauling the way the benefits are distributed by making them unlockable through an upgrade tree of sorts. The document mentions explicitly that no one would likely ever be able to unlock all benefits (even when buying points).
The team created a temporary channel where they are collecting feedback. If you have any make sure to join the #temp-atlas-locker-feedback channel on the Star Atlas Discord.
Star Atlas – Golden Carnival 2024 – Schedule
Golden Carnival is Wrapping Up!
The last week of the Golden Carnival is upon us, or at least for this season! Week 15 of the Golden Carnival, the last Fimbul-sponsored week, garnered a total of 2,839,152 tickets submitted and saw 149 prizes finding a new home.
Now, only the last week is left, the Mega Mystery Week! Interestingly, it is not yet possible to submit any tickets for this final week, though submissions previously opened up over the weekend (beyond week 1).
The Community Team shared that they would announce the details of the Mystery Week on Monday, the day this issue is published. Unfortunately, this did not yet come to fruition before publication. Therefore, make sure to keep an eye on the Discord announcements channel!
Council Update
The Council hosted its first-ever public PIP Review, going over two community-submitted PIPs and providing live feedback (and having live discussions concerning this feedback). They spent nearly 2 hours before wrapping it up. If you are interested in writing a PIP, it may be worth checking out!
Both projects (Gamescom Meetup & Meetup Planning Platform) received feedback, and the Gamescom Meetup implemented these promptly. After approval by the Council, the Foundation went over it later during the week and gave it their stamp of approval as well.
As a result, we could see a brand-new PIP, and the first-ever community-created one, going live for voting as soon as this week!
Star Atlas (UE5) – Upgraded Foliage
C4 & Fleet Command – The Order of Things
Michael (CEO) provided some interesting information on Discord a little while ago in response to a concern concerning combat shared by a community member, which we wanted to share with you (and received approval for). It has to do with the order in which C4 and Fleet Command will go live, while Michael also goes into “Free to play SAGE”. To ensure nothing gets lost in translation (or really, interpretation), we include his message below “as is” (emphasis ours):
Functional Fleet Command consisting of feature parity with Starbased should come at about the same time as C4 on Apollo as a PTR (testing server). C4 will stay in testing as long as necessary, but we will also work on bringing Fleet Command up to parity with C4 over that time. There will be a number of additional updates to UE over this time frame as well. Free to play version of SAGE on Apollo is also looking insanely promising. Much sooner than people think. This concern about combat is overblown. It will be in public testing before mainnet release. And requesting more nuanced systems like ship configuration misses the point that combat is a core pillar of a 4X game. Exploitation. C4 gets us to a full 4X/RTS game. PVE is way more difficult onchain than PVP. We need to execute this year.
Michael Wagner
News Bits
Lastly, we have two small news bits to wrap up this issue:
- Interview with Michael by Jup & Juice—Michael has done multiple interviews, but we feel this one is worth watching for folks who have recently discovered Star Atlas.
- The team performed an Atlas Rebase earlier today (Monday, 9 a.m. PST / 17:00 p.m. UTC)—The ATLAS market pairs of the assets the team is offering on the Galactic Marketplace have been rebased to rebalance to target the USDC equivalent.
That’s it for this week! Stay tuned for the next one!