Welcome to our 248th 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.

Last week brought a substantial rethink of Claim Stakes and Starbase capture in SAGE C4. With very few players engaging with Claim Stakes, the team is working on a much more guided onboarding flow, dramatically lower operating costs, and a slower, lower-maintenance gameplay loop. Starbase capture is being simplified and slowed down as well. Meanwhile, the DAO opened voting on a proposal to fund a new public dashboard.

Let’s dive in!

SAGE C4

During last week’s Atlas Brew #222, John (Product Manager) and José (Community & Lore) shared that work has started on integrating NPC factions with the wider economy and calculating their loot drops. The longer-term goal is for those factions to operate under the same economic rules as players, but autonomous production and market activity have not yet been implemented.

But the real news was a significant change to how Claim Stakes and Starbase capture work, which they are currently working on during Phase 3.

Claim Stake Overhaul

The team found that only around 1% or less of C4 players had placed a Claim Stake. John walked through the rework now underway to make the system easier to understand and less demanding to operate.

The new flow is meant to guide players from the moment a Claim Stake asset is detected. It highlights the Claims area, explains why it is locked, and shows the Council Rank and XP needed to open it. Once unlocked, players should be able to compare eligible sectors from the Central Space Station before choosing where to establish themselves.

An upcoming update will make it so that new players will start with one Council Rank point. That lets someone who owns a Claim Stake but has no ships unlock the Claim Stake path immediately, rather than first having to level up in another career.

The deployment process is changing as well. A Claim Stake will function as a deed that occupies one cargo unit, while the fleet carrying it will need room for the raw materials, Crew, and fuel required to construct the buildings the player intends to build. This replaces the idea of the asset itself carrying the weight of an entire settlement.

The team is also aiming for a much lighter operating loop:

  • Claim Stake fuel consumption is planned to fall by roughly a factor of 1,000.
  • Production should run on a low-touch two- to three-week cadence, rather than requiring hourly upkeep.
  • The team plans to test a 48-hour eviction window for unpaid upkeep. Production would stop during that grace period, but the final duration remains open to testing.

This is the second practical Claim Stake walkthrough we have received this year. The first reveal showed how players would place a stake and build around its central hub. This rework is about getting more players into that loop and keeping operating costs from blocking the test.

Starbase Capture

Starbase capture is also being slowed down. Upgrading and flipping a Starbase are meant to become longer processes, with much larger hit-point pools and a longer build-and-destruction cycle.

The team has dropped the earlier model where attackers would strip a Tier 5 Starbase through Tier 4, Tier 3, and every lower tier before taking it. Each Starbase will instead have one hit-point pool based on its current tier. Besides making capture easier to reason about, that avoids awkward edge cases such as deciding what happens to Tier 5 Claim Stakes when a base is downgraded to Tier 4.

The team also took a fresh map snapshot after Ustur players reported that their Tier 5 Starbase locations came from an older snapshot. Those locations have meanwhile been corrected.

DAO Updates

Voting opened last week on PIP-36, which would authorize up to 13,992,734 ATLAS for a public Star Atlas DAO Dashboard. If it passes, the DAO Council will publish a Request for Proposal, set the requirements, and select a developer through that process.

The DAO portal has offered a Treasury view since 2023. This proposal would go further by bringing financial data, governance information, PIPs, and Council information together in one public resource.

PIP-36: Star Atlas DAO Dashboard

This proposal authorizes the creation of a public Star Atlas DAO Dashboard and a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process to select a DEVELOPER to build the Dashboard. The Dashboard will consolidate important DAO financial, governance, PIP, and Council information into a single publicly accessible resource. The maximum amount authorized under this PIP is 13,992,734 ATLAS (the current 5% Ecosystem Fund limit). Following approval, the DAO Council will publish an RFP listing Dashboard requirements and the process for selecting a DEVELOPER.

Structure:

  • Structure: 1-off PIP
  • Requested funding: 13,992,734 ATLAS
  • Voting Opened: Friday, September 18th
  • Voting Closes: Friday, October 2nd (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~3 days in, ~18M PVP committed):

  • Votes: 13
  • For: 14.1%
  • Against: 85.6%
  • Abstain: 0.3%

The proposal is trailing in its opening days. Voting remains open through October 2nd.

News bits

To wrap up this week’s issue, here are a few more UE5-related tidbits:

  • Racing in UE5 has been fixed! You can now enjoy racing once again on the Exinade map, and others.
  • With official matchmaking servers back online, this coming weekend will be a Double XP Weekend! To be exact, this will run from September 25th until September 27th.

That is it for this week! Thanks for reading, and until the next!