Welcome to our 218th 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 week’s issue brings a mix of delay, progress, and governance in motion. Holosim Chapter 2 did not launch as planned, but that extra time did allow additional improvements to land. Meanwhile, DAO voting is underway for both the inaugural DAO Casters program and José’s temporary funding proposal. The Z.ink Profile received stability and XP updates, and SAGE C4 testing continues to move forward behind the scenes.

Let’s dive in!

Play Video: Star Atlas - Holosim Chapter 2 - Delay announcement by SAGE

Holosim – Season 1 Chapter 2

The second chapter of Holosim was announced to launch this past Thursday, but unfortunately, the team has delayed it.

Michael shared that the team migrated Holosim to run on a legitimate z.ink testnet to be better prepared for the z.ink mainnet launch. Previously, it was still running on the (now-deemed-legacy) AtlasNet. Though this delayed the launch, he added that this means they are now better prepared for the future.

The good news is that this delay also allowed the team to finish up some tasks, such as the new combat UI they mentioned last week. This will now be in the game from day 1. It should integrate much better into the gaming experience than the previous panel.

José (Lead lore writer) is hopeful that they will be able to launch Holosim Chapter 2 during the Atlas Brew this Wednesday, but that remains to be seen.

Star Atlas - DAO

Star Atlas – DAO

DAO Updates

Two new PIPs (POLIS Improvement Proposals) opened for voting this past week: the one to hire Jose and the long-awaited DaoCasters vote. Here are the details:

PIP-27: DAO Casters Election: Term 1

Per the requirements of PIP-20: Establishment of the DAO Casters Program — Elected Content Creators for Star Atlas Ecosystem Promotion, this is the election PIP for a structured program of 5 elected content creators dedicated to promoting the entire Star Atlas ecosystem.

Structure:

  • Structure: Single Transferable Vote (STV)
  • Author: Star Atlas DAO Council (SAC-3)
  • Voting Opened: Saturday, February 21st
  • Voting Closes: Friday, March 6th (end-of-day UTC)

Preliminary results (~2.5 days in, ~39M PVP committed):

  1. Winston
  2. Alices Arcade
  3. Odvb
  4. Sakaleynx
  5. Funcracker

DAO Casters #1 - Intermediate voting results [by Aephia's STV visualizer]

DAO Casters #1 – Intermediate voting results [by Aephia’s STV visualizer]

Note: The Council shared that Chet Roberts has withdrawn from the initiative. Please do not vote for him anymore.

Note 2: The end date of the first DAO Caster term mentioned in the (copied) summary above is wrong. April 1st is the start date, which means the end date is 90 days later, on June 30th, 2026.

PIP-28: Temporary DAO Funding to Preserve Core Lore, Design, and Community Functions

In an effort to boost our runway and ensure Star Atlas can fulfill the roadmap and deliver the releases planned for this year, ATMTA (the leading developer of Star Atlas) was forced to make painful cuts to its talent. Unfortunately, my position as a lore writer and community team member was terminated as part of this process. Despite this, I remain confident in Star Atlas and in the incredible game modes that still have the potential to turn this situation around, such as Holosim, C4, Z.ink, and Siege Mode. This PIP exists because I want to continue fighting alongside this community and contributing to Star Atlas during this critical period.

Structure:

  • Requested funding: 30,000 USD (6 x 5,000 USD)
  • Structure: 1-off PIP
  • Author: ZessK
  • Voting Opened: Saturday, February 21st
  • Voting Closes: Friday, March 6th (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~2.5 days in, ~80M PVP committed):

  • For: 93.9%
  • Against: 3.84%
  • Abstain: 2.25%

This is a special PIP, as it does not rely on the Ecosystem Fund but instead on the outside treasury, particularly the USD portion. This requires Michael’s approval, and he has been clear from the first moment that José has this.

Z.ink Platform Update

The z.ink Profile received a few of the updates Jim (Senior Web Director) mentioned two weeks ago. He posted the following announcement on the z.ink Discord:

Zink Update: Stability & Smarter SAGE XP

We’ve just deployed a series of improvements to the Zink platform to improve reliability, linked wallet tracking, and better reward “real” SAGE activities.

Enhanced Stability — We have resolved the intermittent “502 Bad Gateway” connection errors. The API is now better optimized to handle traffic, ensuring smoother profile loading, updates, and blockchain interactions.

SAGE XP Updates — We have updated the XP engine to better capture the quality of your in-game activity.

  • Daily XP Drop: SAGE activity is now tracked throughout the day and awarded in a single update at ~1 am UTC.
  • Meaningful Progression: This new daily model allows us to reduce zXP for low-value actions (like excessive sub-warping) and boosting rewards for meaningful gameplay and fleet management.

These changes ensure your Zink Profile level accurately reflects your real impact in the Galia Expanse. Live now!

Beyond the above updates, Jim also created an improved wallet linking flow. He recorded a video showing that off, and explained:

[This video] explores the wallet switching behavior and linked wallet features. Key fixes include requiring users to return to their primary wallet before actions like subscribing, preventing profile deletion while on primary profile, and enforcing the rule that each wallet can only be linked to one profile at a time.

The bug fixes mentioned last week are still in testing, and it is not yet clear exactly when they will roll out.

News Bits

But that is not all! Here are some more news bits that are simply too short to warrant their own section. That does not mean they are any less important, however!

  • After the initial delay, the team’s 50 Mamba EX buy orders went live this past Monday, and two (botted) accounts got lucky, splitting them roughly in half. This means no one else managed to sell their Fimbul Mamba EX. This was not really a surprise, as many expected something like this to happen beforehand.
  • As promised, on that same Monday, the renewed faction-specific ship redemption recipes went live as well.
  • The team has started testing Sage C4 on the z.ink testnet! Besides polishing and bugfixing, the team is also adapting the combat equation, as Danny (CPO) wants to make this more complex by including missiles and evasive maneuvers.
  • Pressed for a timetable during the Atlas Brew, Jim shared that he anticipates the SAGE C4 PTR release is a matter of weeks, not months.
  • Danny asked José to make SAGE C4 lore-consistent. He has meanwhile begun this monumental task of writing lore for every region, planet, and asset.
  • During the Lore Keepers meeting last week, José shared that he is training an AI assistant on all the lore he has written so far and plans to use that knowledge base to create a lore wiki.
  • In addition, he is hopeful that this will also allow him to finally generate the background stories for the tens of thousands of crew members (cards). This was part of the original announcement of Crew Cards and has been one of the things we have been waiting on.

Sneak Peek

The team dropped this sneak peek video on their X-account, showing a very early (and quite buggy – visually) implementation of a herd of alien animals (Minky Steers) on a planet’s surface, scattering as they are approached by the player:

Play Video: Star Atlas - Galia Game Mode - 100 Minky Steers [WIP]

That is it for this week! Thanks for reading!