Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #235

Welcome to our 235th 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.

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This week’s update is all about what comes next for SAGE C4. During Atlas Brew #209, the team laid out the roadmap for the next PTR phases, including Combat V2, the Nemesis NPC engine, regional governance, and the first real look at how crew may evolve into a gameplay system of their own. Beyond that, we got fresh insights into the team’s Steam ambitions for UE5, two noteworthy DAO proposals, and a handful of smaller updates from across the ecosystem.

Let’s dive in!

SAGE C4 – Phase 2 & 3

During last week’s Atlas Brew #209, José (Lore & Community), alongside John (Product Manager) and Michael (CEO), shared the planned 2-phase improvements for the SAGE C4 PTR.

Phase 2

The next phase, with Phase 1 being the launch of the PTR itself, will bring us the much-anticipated Combat V2, alongside the Nemesis NPC engine, the Diplomacy/Democratic module, and utility for Cultivation Claims output.

We are still at least one week away from a PTR reset, which will bring Combat V2 (introducing a random modifier – moving away from deterministic outcomes, different damage & shield types, and a lot of additional stat modifiers) and the Nemesis NPC engine (much improved from Holosim) into SAGE C4. We should be getting an announcement in advance that will share when the rest is to take place.

Either before or after this reset (or alongside it), we will also receive the Democracy/Diplomatic module, which will bring regional governance into the game. This, in itself, will introduce a player taxation module that allows players to increase the crafting tax within a region and pocket the difference.

Though Michael did mention the Cultivation Claims as well, and he did mention stims when talking about Combat V2, it is not entirely clear if Phase 2 will bring the full Cultivation Facilities loop already.

Star Atlas – Regional Governance UI in C4 [Work in Progress]

Regional Governance V1

Jacob (CTO) shared the internal summary, which José kindly shared during the Atlas Brew, detailing the current plans for V1 of the Democracy/Diplomatic module. Here are the relevant details he posted:

New gameplay layer

• Added starbase-scoped governance as bounded parameter voting, not a full generic DAO system.
• Governance lives on the selected starbase: STARBASE > Governance.
• Voters can dedicate verified voting power/PVP to a starbase and vote on that starbase’s economic parameters.
• Changes are epoch-based: votes aggregate during the epoch, then apply later instead of instantly flipping fees.
• Low quorum keeps the current config instead of forcing weakly supported changes.
• Starbase level/sequence gating controls activation; if a starbase falls out of eligibility, governance-backed fee behavior falls back to defaults.

Voteable parameters

• Crafting fee multiplier.
• Local market fee.
• DAO vs local starbase treasury split.
• Local treasury distribution share.

Diplomat crew requirement

• Delegation is now capped by crew physically present at the starbase.
• Each locked diplomat crew supports 100 voting power by default.
• The program reserves diplomat crew through starbase busy_crew, so those crew cannot be loaded away normally while backing governance.
• Submit-vote validates the diplomat crew is still present/locked instead of silently clipping voting power.
• The client now exposes this directly with “Diplomats to lock”, required diplomats, voting cap, available crew, and current diplomats.

Treasury + rewards

• Governed crafting and local-market fees can route between DAO treasury and the local starbase treasury.
• Added starbase treasury accounting plus reward-index based ATLAS claims.
• Claim state tracks each voter’s reward cursor so rewards settle proportionally to effective delegated power.

Client UX

• Added a native Starbase Governance panel in fc-app.
• Shows active/current vs pending/next epoch fee state, quorum/support, delegated power, treasury/reward state, and claimable rewards.
• Added actions for init governance, set/update voter power, delegate/update delegation, submit vote, close epoch, init claim state, and claim rewards.
• UI pass cleaned up the player-facing language around Governance/Epoch, percent inputs, fee labels, and up/down delta indicators.

Phase 3 – Crew

But last week’s Atlas Brew #209 did more than reiterate the Combat V2 and Nemesis package we already covered in last week’s issue. John laid out the clearest public crew path yet: existing cNFT crew would first be bridged into z.ink as unique Token-2022 NFTs, then turned into trainable characters with skills, XP, ship roles, and mission-specific value.

He also showed us a PTR mockup of a mission board that lets you assign crew members to missions. Different crew members change mission odds, with both equipment and aptitude playing a role. It will cost a certain amount of ATLAS to embark on a mission, and missions can fail, which means there is a chance of losing something here as well. On the other hand, successfully completing missions will pay out loot and/or (more) ATLAS, making them worthwhile.

José reinforced that direction during last week’s Lore Keepers. He said he is actively helping code this new crew stack and described a version of Star Atlas where crew stop feeling like disposable fillers and start functioning as actual in-universe characters with careers, gear, health, and specialization. That matters because it shifts crew cards from being only a number into their own gameplay layer.

The team also plans to tie those missions back into the wider galaxy. John and José theorized that successful or failed crew activity could affect sector health, while repeated failures may even escalate into claim stakes getting overrun and temporarily disabled until players clear a harder recovery event.

UE5

Though mostly between the lines, there was some news on UE5 development as well this past week.

Steam Web2 version?

Across several Discord replies, Michael explained that the team is exploring Steam launches for stripped-down Star Atlas products with the web3 layer removed, potentially including isolated UE modes and the single-player Galia mode. That does not mean the Web3 vision is being abandoned. It means the team is looking for an alternative way to get Star Atlas in front of more people.

Michael is currently leaning toward a single consolidated early-access UE release rather than several separate clients, and would likely price that package at $5 to $15.

He was also pretty clear about the limits. The point of such a release would be visibility and some supplemental revenue, not a major new-feature push before launch. Michael said the team would mostly need to work with the content it already has, because C4 and z.ink still take priority and the UE pipeline remains expensive.

Claim Stakes

Brad (UE5 Wizard) is currently working on implementing Claim Stakes into the Galia Campaign mode. The idea is that this will be “end-campaign” content, where players will be able to claim a piece of a planet to then build out their mining operations. This will require players to gather resources to construct the various buildings, so it will take them a while to max out.

Michael compared this to Satisfactory, which, like Factorio, is a game where you build production pipelines by placing machines adjacent to one another so they can interact and advance production.

Lastly, of note, Brad is building it so it will be easy to integrate into multiplayer environments as well, which will be useful down the line.

Star Atlas DAO

DAO Updates

There are two POLIS Improvement Proposals moving through the process of being open to a vote that are noteworthy. Michael’s ATMTA Reimbursement Proposal and José’s proposal to remain on the DAO’s payroll for another 6 months.

ATMTA Reimbursement Proposal

Big news on the DAO side this week! Michael drafted a PIP requesting that the DAO reimburse historical setup costs, service provider fees, and tax liabilities tied to DAO revenue in 2021. He stressed that this is not a survival measure right now, but a backstop that would make near-term delivery on SAGE C4, UE5, and z.ink less fragile.

Discussion on this PIP has gone through the roof, with the dedicated thread counting ~1500 comments. We will likely hear much more about this during the Atlas Brew this week, as Michael plans to discuss it there.

You can find this PIP on Discord under the name “ATMTA Historic Expense Reimbursement“.

Here is the summary:

This proposal seeks reimbursement of $469,513.53 USD from the Star Atlas DAO Treasury for verified historic expenditures paid by ATMTA on behalf of the Star Atlas DAO covering 2021 tax obligations and payments to two professional services providers.

Reimbursement structured as 75% USDC ($352,135.15) and 25% ATLAS (~$117,378.38 equivalent), split into two equal semi-annual tranches of $234,756.76 each.

Given this exceeds the standard Ecosystem Fund limit, the Star Atlas Foundation is coordinating this as an extraordinary funding measure for a direct community vote. Outcome remains entirely in the hands of POLIS holders.

José’s DAO Payroll Proposal

In parallel, a journey that started a few weeks earlier, José drafted a PIP to ask the DAO for a 6-month extension of his first 6-month term on the DAO’s payroll. You can find it on Discord under the name “Renewal Temporary DAO Funding to Preserve Core Lore, Design & Community Functions – Author: Jose – NOOT“.

Here is the summary:

Roughly six months ago, the Star Atlas Community DAO approved temporary funding to keep me embedded at ATMTA (the leading developer of Star Atlas) following the team reductions. That arrangement worked exactly as intended, and the term is now coming to an end. The first term funded real, shipped work across many layers of the Star Atlas ecosystem, such as the Star Atlas tabletop RPG system, ongoing lore leadership, Atlas Brew, legal support, Project Galia, and support to the C4 ecosystem. This PIP proposes a renewal of that arrangement, under identical terms, while ATMTA’s revenue continues to recover from the ongoing bear market.

The funds requested are a total of 30,000 USDC paid out over 6 months at 5,000 USDC a month, taken out of the treasury and routed to ATMTA to cover my reduced salary.

It is important to know that Michael has promised to take over José’s salary again if their reimbursement proposal gets approved. This PIP will be discarded in that case.

Light of Evisco

Last week, every player/character on the upcoming Star Atlas Tabletop Roleplay Campaign got a dedicated Session 0 with Game Master José (a one-on-one, introductory session). The first one with Aaron, who is portraying a MUD human named Theodore, who is the son of a wealthy merchant family.

The event was livestreamed during the second half of the Lore Keepers event. The others were held privately in the days after, but unfortunately, they took place behind closed doors. No recordings were made of these either.

Star Atlas – SAGE Editor Suite – The latest, new tools

News Bits

Here are a few more news items to wrap up this week’s issue:

• Last week, we reported that the UE5 game client had been removed (and subsequently restored) from the Epic Games Store (EGS). Michael shared that the latest UE5/Galia build encountered friction during EGS review because some marketing language read as too gambling-adjacent. This had to be resolved before the game could be made available again. After they managed that, they found they also had to rebuild the multiplayer servers, though this alone did not fix the matchmaking issue. A server redeploy should be close, bringing the servers back online (if all goes well)!
• If the servers come back up in time, make sure to join the Iris’ Blessing Double XP weekend this coming weekend!
• Michael looked into the circulating supply numbers the team lists on its website. The team found serious issues in its tracking and posted corrected circulating-supply figures of roughly 24.59B ATLAS and 290.92M POLIS.
• The Sage Editor Suite has quietly been expanded with new tools that the team is using, and you can use, to manipulate the scanning configs, council rank XP progression, Missions, and C4 Progression in-game.

Sneak Peeks

Last week also brought a nice little ArtStation batch, with moddable GAN rifle concept shots, two looks at various Tiers of MUD Racer crew members, and a behind-the-scenes look at the Calico Flattop.

Calico Flattop

To start with the last one, Andrian Luchian shared a bunch of concept shots for the Calico Flattop, including shots we’ve seen used on the Galactic Marketplace. Towards the bottom of his post, you can find some earlier concepts and work-in-progress shots as well!

Star Atlas – Calico Flattop – by Andrian Luchian [Concept Art]

Star Atlas – Calico Flattop – by Andrian Luchian [Concept Art]

Moddable GAN Rifle

Most of you will have seen the moddable GAN rifle before, but EL1J4H has uploaded some new work-in-progress shots of the weapon, for your viewing pleasure:

Star Atlas – Star Atlas | Mod Rifle – by EL1J4H [Concept Art]

MUD Racers

Lastly, Vladimir Nikityuk, Ivan Podzorov, and the Sperasoft account all posted Tier 0, Tier 1, and Tier 2 artwork for Crew outfits, likely intended to support the progression of an MUD character in the Racing game.

You can check these out here:

• Tier 0
• Tier 1, and more Tier 1
• Tier 2

Star Atlas – Star Atlas: MUD Racer – T1 – Posted by Vladimir Nikityuk [Concept Art]

Star Atlas – Star Atlas: MUD Racer – T2 – by Ivan Podzorov [Concept Art]

_That is it for this week! Thanks for readin_g!