Right now, the rarity of a ship (from common to legendary) is set by the Star Atlas team. But in the future, once players will be able to craft ships on their own – this will change: “Rarity will be tied dynamically to actual total supply when ship manufacturing comes online”, so Danny Floyd, CTO and co-founder of Star Atlas. Until now, rarity is “tied directly to the stats breakdown but is a starting point. Ultimately at this stage pricing took into account all these factors and then applied a perceived value factor by the econ team before launch.
We think it aligns with what makes sense for the intended future gameplay in regards to the attractiveness of cosmetics as well as feature set per ship. But ultimately it will be up to the open market where the price falls and a lot of that has to do with utility in the final game. That utility is basically unpredictable until the final game stats settle after long periods of playtesting.”