Welcome to our 18th newsletter. A lot of information was released this week, so let’s dive right in!

POLIS DAO

During the Townhall, the team shed some light on where they are with their efforts to get the POLIS DAO up and running. The key take-away was that it will be postponed, though a new target date was not provided. Other noteworthy aspects of the update were:

  • Staking was worked on by a 3rd party last year, the team got to review it early this year and came to the conclusion it was not going to work. This is the core reason for the delay.
  • Team chose Tribeca DAO to build their own contracts around, primarily due to them using Anchor, which is also used extensively by the team.
  • They are investing in auditing some of the contracts used by Tribeca DAO.
  • Research is ongoing in the best way to set up a legal entity that will handle the DAO.
  • The UI wireframes for staking, governance, and their interaction have been finalized and the UI has been in active development for a few weeks now.
  • They are looking into how to integrate the other DAO-layers into the whole.

Furthermore, Michael updated us that 75 million ATLAS is sitting in the DAO treasury.

Star Atlas Galactic Marketplace Relaunch

With the POLIS DAO being delayed, the very first feature we can expect to rollout this year is the new Galactic Marketplace! To quickly re-cap, this new marketplace will:

  • Unite the NFT and SFT markets required by Star Atlas - currently Marketplace is only working with SFTs.
  • Look and feel more like an in-game auction house - should be familiar to gamers.
  • Simplify purchasing items - purchases no longer need to be claimed and no more orderbook.
  • Come with ATLAS staking, which won’t give a very big yield, but will be used to unlock certain future sales / aspects of the new marketplace - making it still worthwhile.

This week, we learned about another core feature that will find its way here: Peer-2-peer trading! It will be very important for players to trade goods directly with another, without having to trust one-another by sending it directly, or going through the marketplace. It’s really good to see Star Atlas introducing this feature!

credit: Star Atlas

Major Roadmap Pivot

This week the team announced that CREAM won’t be coming anymore, having been superseded by SCREAM. Just looking at the abbreviation, one might think something has been added to CREAM (the S), but this is just an unlucky coincidence. CREAM was going to be focused around land-gameplay and would introduce ship-crafting, but these features are no longer planned to be released this year.

Instead, SCREAM, which stands for: Ship Configuration, Resource Extraction, And [Ship] Missions, will focus (as the name indicates) on ships.

We’ve written a separate article on this, but in short, the team’s reasoning was that:

  • They want to work on features that would persist into the future, instead of being a stop-gap that would be thrown away at a later date. An example of the latter is the current ship-staking with SCORE. CREAM was going to introduce a similar mechanic to mine resources.
  • They want to utilize the assets everybody already has, and they will sell more this year. By introducing land-gameplay they would have to introduce a great number of new assets people would have to buy, which the team would then also have to put time into, and thus slowing down the release of actual gameplay. Which brings us to the next point:
  • They want to make sure they get to introduce actual gameplay this year. SCORE Tier 0 did not, and the Showroom will neither, the same with CREAM, but SCREAM will. SCREAM supersedes SCORE Tier 1, and will focus primarily on interactive missions for your fleets.

Read more in our coverage of SCREAM.

Showroom

Michael reiterated that multiplayer support,along with shared environment experience, will likely come after the initial release of this module.

We also got some new information: Character selection will offer two species of each faction upon the initial release of the showroom around the middle of this year.

GAO Wave 2

A new brochure has been released, detailing the 48 ships that are to be released this year! Though 51 were announced, Michael clarified that it is omitting the 3 drones that will be released as well. There are however quite a few more observations to make, so we wrote a separate article on this as well.

The brochure itself can be found here, make sure to bookmark or save it for easy access and reference.

Furthermore, next week will see the sale of 2 of these new ships!

credit: Star Atlas

Risk Zones

Chypto released a document, meant to trigger discussion, detailing core aspects of the High-Risk Zone (HRZ) and some of the systems that are related to it. There were three big topics being outlined: Insurances, Bounties, and Dueling. Below is a short overview of each topic’s highlights, wherein some of the feedback and changes suggested by Chypto [after the release] have already been incorporated.

Insurances

  • The team itself will offer insurances, they are not relying on a 3rd party.
  • You can insure your possessions before flying into the HRZ, this is optional.
  • Possessions acquired in HRZ are not insured.
  • When destroyed, insured ships never yield more salvage-value than the insurance deductible (the amount paid for the insurance). This is to make sure the system can’t be gamed to generate more value.

Bounties

  • Committing a crime in the Medium-Risk Zone (MRZ), including attacking another player or NPC, will result in a bounty being placed on your ship/s.
  • Players can collect these bounties by “ensnaring offenders” and calling for CoP intervention
  • Council of Peace (CoP) NPC’s will target ships that have a bounty. There is no CoP in the HRZ, but players can still target you and claim the bounty.
  • The CoP is present in every faction and they will honor bounties, no matter the faction you are from. In other words: there won’t be a safe haven in the Safe Zone for anyone that has a bounty on their ships.
  • Players who aid in capturing ships that have a bounty, will earn that bounty.
  • Bounties can be “washed” in the HRZ by some of the banished NPC factions like the Jorvik. This requires a good standing with them.
  • Bounties can also be removed through hacking, this is a career path (profession).

Dueling

  • In the Safe Zone, duels can be held if both parties accept. There can be ATLAS (and perhaps POLIS) staked by other players to bet on the outcome.
  • Duels are not just about fighting, it can be racing and other gameplay aspects as well.

Media Initiatives

Michael re-iterated that they are working on creating more Star Atlas content using other media outlets, with two of these launching this year. We’ve learned that one of these is going to be a Star Atlas magazine! No further details were provided.

Awards

StarAtlas.com, created by Hello Monday, has won the Site of the Year Award! More information can be found on the awards website.

Other notable updates

There were more updates this week that are worth mentioning:

  • The decision has been made to move to WebGL for the upcoming web-based game-modules, meaning these modules will move away from text and 2D imagery, and be presented using primarily 3D aspects. Do not expect them to recreate the UE5 game on the web however! This is supposed to visually spice up the gameplay already planned for the browser-game.
  • The team is contemplating bringing baby aliens and daycares into the game to make it feel more “real” and lively.
  • Players will have seamless entry to another faction’s security/safe zones unless they have a criminal record/bounty.
  • Player crews will have an advantage over NPC crews, potentially in the form of buffs.
  • Though first-person land-based gameplay will come at some point, the team is first looking at getting space-based gameplay out of the door
  • Some early work is being done on a Space Flight Sim in UE5. This is targeted for a release during the second half of 2022, after the Showroom has been released.