Welcome to our 200th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.

This past week, the Econ Team released their latest quarterly report and hosted a forum to discuss it, along with Holosim Chapter 1 and the newest SAGE changes. The Community Team shared a brief update on the z.ink airdrop campaign, and two new DAO proposals went live. There’s also an upcoming event with Wilder World tomorrow (October 7th), and Chip has published some fresh developer logs!

Oh, and by the way, you’re reading issue #200! 🎉

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Issue 200

Four years ago, on October 3rd, 2021, we published the very first issue of what has since become the longest-running newsletter dedicated to Star Atlas development. What started as a small effort to follow an ambitious project has now grown into a consistent chronicle of its evolution, week after week, year after year.

Of course, 200 issues don’t quite fill 208 weeks. That’s easily explained: we take short breaks in sync with the development team, usually around Christmas and New Year’s, when everyone takes time to recharge. In other words, when the team pauses, so do the updates.

Star Atlas itself is on a remarkably long-term journey. The project is already 4.5 years in, with an estimated 10-year vision ahead. That means we’ve had the privilege of covering the last four years of progress so far, and we fully intend to keep following along for the next five (and beyond).

Most importantly, we want to say thank you!

Thank you for being part of this journey, for your curiosity, your feedback, and your trust in us to bring you reliable updates every week. Your continued readership is what makes this possible, and we’re deeply grateful to have you with us as Star Atlas continues to unfold its grand vision.

If you’re still reading these on our website, consider subscribing (see the bottom of this article). This newsletter isn’t going anywhere.

Here’s to the next 200 issues and to the future of Star Atlas!

Econ Report Q3 — Holosim Season 1 Chapter 1 Fleet Agression Map by Intensity

Econ Report Q3 — Holosim Season 1 Chapter 1 Combat Farming Locations and Combat Intensity

Economic Report Q3

The Econ Team published their quarterly report on the state of the Star Atlas economy for the third quarter of this year.

Below, we copied the executive summary for your convenience. There are a lot more details in the full report, which, as always, provides interesting insights into the state of Star Atlas and its economy.

Economic uncertainty paved the way for new all-time highs across key metrics this quarter. The Faction Infrastructure Contract (FIC) loop continued to emit the most ATLAS of the three available, driving record spikes in ATLAS emissions even as average daily emissions fell to lower levels. Despite heightened volatility and concentration among top redeemers, the relationship between emissions and secondary token prices remains insignificant, pointing to the continuation of broader macroeconomic forces impacting the Star Atlas ecosystem.

Census results revealed a decisive redistribution of wealth. Overall population contracted slightly, yet aggregate wealth rose, powered by sharp gains among citizens who now command more than a quarter of the ecosystem’s total wealth. Residents, by contrast, lost ground both in absolute and relative terms, underscoring a widening gap between these two employed groups. Non-resident groups remained large in number, but their influence stagnated outside of modest currency gains.

Star Atlas Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped by a significantly smaller margin than the previous period, reflecting primarily token price volatility rather than weakening fundamentals. ONI retained its position as the largest contributor to aggregate GDP, though USTUR continued to deliver the highest per-capita output, consistent with its smaller but more efficient player base. The introduction of Ink through UE5 arena gameplay marked one of the most significant additions to the Star Atlas economy this quarter, expanding the role that skill plays in the broader resource ecosystem.

Key Highlights:

  • Daily ATLAS emissions dropped by an average of 10.5%, with simultaneous record high volatility observed throughout the quarter.
  • The citizen group increased its wealth to new heights, owning over a quarter of aggregate wealth within the Star Atlas ecosystem.
  • The Star Atlas GDP contracted this quarter by 26%, primarily due to token volatility.
  • Earnings per dollar across wealth groups showed that high wealth accounts between 1k-10k outperformed the whale and medium wealth groups.
  • Holosim captured a unique subset of active players, negligibly impacting the Starbased active user base.

Holosim’s first season successfully launched, introducing quests, combat, and fleet engagements to a free-to-play environment. Participation metrics confirmed it served as a complement rather than a substitute for Starbased, and the quest system proved engaging beyond raw rewards, with freighting emerging as the most time-efficient career. Combat incentives beckoned the most aggressive players across factions, with large fighting forces consolidating around the MUD-ONI border.

SAGE Update

The team updated the LP earnings only two weeks ago, but last week saw another change (which Chris was already alluding to when the first change went live).

Early last week, Chris (VP of Game Economy) shared the following changes that would be going live this past Thursday:

  • Electromagnet Upgrade: 132 -> 133 [+0.76%]
  • Electronics Downgrade: 107 -> 92 [-14.02%]
  • Field Stabilizer Upgrade: 217 -> 222 [+2.30%]
  • Framework Downgrade: 113 -> 68 [-39.82%]
  • Particle Accelerator Downgrade: 506 -> 498 [-1.58%]
  • Power Source Upgrade: 96 -> 98 [+2.08%]
  • Radiation Absorber Downgrade: 333 -> 331 [-0.60%]
  • SDU Downgrade: 1325-> 1238 [-6.57%]

He also shared the following:

  • Final adjustments will be calculated on Thursday morning, so the above is subject to change.
  • It is entirely possible that another update will follow this one, but given the stability of the other resources, it seems unlikely that a fourth update would be necessary.

Meanwhile, the changes have gone live, although the SDU downgrade has not yet. Perhaps this is due to last-minute insights (a good few people had been pushing back against that change in particular), or an error prevented the team from going live with it. We’ll no doubt learn more this coming week.

Lastly, Chris shared the following note regarding Phantom Starbases:

There has been substantial feedback from the community that the current Phantom Starbase gameplay loop feels stale. In particular, that it rewards whales who are able to better capitalize on straightforward processes such as mining and processing Iron. To that end, the team is seriously considering a weekly or bi-weekly update to LP rewards that would shift the meta at regular intervals that are difficult to predict. This would make “set and forget” gameplay styles highly sporadic and likely unprofitable. If you’d like to have your voice heard, please join us on Thursday for the Star Atlas Monthly Economic Forum!

Economic Forum - Holosim Season 1 Chapter 1 Recap

Economic Forum – Holosim Season 1 Chapter 1 Recap

Economic Forum

On the heels of the Economic Report, the Econ team hosted its regularly scheduled, monthly Economic Forum (#17). The first half focused on the quarterly report, with the second half kicking off with a substantial amount of Holosim statistics (see the image above). Afterward, it mostly became a Q&A session on the current state of SAGE, recent changes, and theorycrafting on potential future changes. Below, we highlight some of the things that were mentioned:

  • People seem to be upset about the “Set it and forget it” behavior at the Phantom Starbases, which the stable LP earnings stimulate. The Econ team is considering combating this by regularly tweaking the LP earnings.
  • Looking into adding one or two more ship crafting recipes to SAGE Starbased. They are currently debating this internally.
  • The team did a preliminary pass on C4 economics, but further work is needed.

If this caught your interest, be sure to check out the full recording by StarAtlasTV.

z.ink — An Identity Linked SVM L1 — Crafted by ATMTA

z.ink Update

The team has made significant progress on the airdrop dashboard, and limited testing is planned to begin with some community members later this week. The plan is to test for around 1-2 weeks, after which the airdrop campaign will likely launch.

Santi (VP of Community & Ecosystem) posted the following update regarding this on Discord last week:

We have been making solid progress on the Zink Dashboard and a round of internal community testing about to start. All community testers who have been selected for this initial test have been onboarded and will receive instructions on their tasks in the coming days. We expect this first period to last 1 or 2 weeks, coupled with a review of the testers’ findings and bug squashing. After this is done… well, we will tell you later, but it starts getting exciting for the Star Atlas community! Hold on to your seats, Zink season is coming.

Star Atlas DAO

DAO Update

The Star Atlas DAO Council was on the Atlas Brew this past week to provide some insights and updates as to what they’ve been up to.

PIP-19

The voting window for PIP-19: Funding Independent Economic Research and Maintenance of Critical Data Resources closed yesterday (Sunday, October 5th) at the end of the day. After a slow start, the proposal gradually gained more yes votes, but ultimately, it fell short. The proposal was defeated with a margin of just over 50% voting against it. Below the PIPs description, you can find the final result.

This proposal requests 44,800,000 ATLAS over the period of 360 days in funding from the Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund to provide investors and players with transparent economic and financial information surrounding the Star Atlas Ecosystem. This amount will be distributed in four 11,200,000 ATLAS increments over four sub-PIPs, each with a span of 90 days. The funding is meant to ensure that the Star ATLAS community continues to have economic data resources, even in the face of structural breaks in data resources and in the face of uncertainty from rising costs.

The final numbers look as follows:

  • For: 41.37%
  • Against: 57.89%
  • Abstain: 0.73%
  • Total PVP Voted: 144 million

PIP-20

PIP-20: Establishment of the DAO Casters Program — Elected Content Creators for Star Atlas Ecosystem Promotion, went live for voting this past Thursday (alongside PIP-21, see below):

This proposal introduces the DAO Casters—a structured program of five elected content creators dedicated to promoting the entire Star Atlas ecosystem, including the DAO, the game, and broader community initiatives. DAO Casters will be elected through a formal election process (self-nomination, 1 STV round) as a once-off measure (any further extension of this program would require a new proposal). Each Caster will receive a monthly stipend of 360,000 ATLAS, plus an additional 360,000 ATLAS per month to fund giveaways, contests, and promotions. Caster responsibilities will include weekly content, monthly community livestreams, and regular collaborations. This program provides the ecosystem with consistent, engaging, and professional media representation.

  • Requested funding: 10.8 million ATLAS over 3 months
  • Structure: 1-off PIP
  • Author: Signal
  • Voting Opened: Thursday, October 2nd
  • Voting Closes: Wednesday, October 15th (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~5 days in, ~60M PVP committed):

  • For: 75.68%
  • Against: 24.02%
  • Abstain: 0.3%

PIP-21

Alongside PIP-20, PIP-21: Rogue Data Hub went live on the same day:

We request $8,820 USDC for Year 1 from the DAO treasury to fund the Rogue Data Hub (RDH) — a community-operated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product that indexes, processes, and exposes on-chain Star Atlas data. ($2,100 initial, $6,720 yearly maintenance)

RDH ensures developers, DAOs, and community members have reliable, structured, and real-time data for dashboards, tax reports, visualizations, bots, and decision-support tools.

  • Requested funding: 8,820 USDC
  • Structure: 1-off PIP
  • Author: Lorddo & Solwalker
  • Voting Opened: Thursday, October 2nd
  • Voting Closes: Wednesday, October 15th (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~5 days in, ~73M PVP committed):

  • For: 45.1%
  • Against: 54.87%
  • Abstain: 0.02%

Sneak Peek

The team shared the following video this past week, showing off a custom skin on the Busan Pulse ship.

Play Video: Busan Pulse with Skin

Chip (VP of Game Product) also shared this (low-res) image showing off ship skin selection in UE5. If all goes well, this could go live with the UE5 October update later this month.

Star Atlas - UE5 Ship Skins [WIP]

Star Atlas – UE5 Ship Skins [WIP]

From the Engineering Bay

Chip has been posting frequent development updates for a while now. Below we list his new posts from last week:

Note: Last week, we accidentally posted a near-identical list of updates to the one from the previous week, not realizing that Chip had taken a 1-week hiatus. Our apologies for the error! The above items are all from last week.

image

Star Atlas x Wilder World – Game Night – October 7th

Wilder World Team-up

In collaboration with Wilder World, the team is organizing a back-to-back game night this coming Tuesday, October 7th. The plan is to host two 1-hour sessions in each game:

Make sure to join the Wilder World Discord, beyond the Star Atlas one, if you would like to participate!

The following prizes are available during this event:

  • $350 WILD tokens
  • $500 SA assets
  • limited access keys

You’ve reached the end of this week’s—200th—newsletter. See you next week!