Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #166

Welcome to our 166th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.

The latest Unreal Engine 5 patch is officially live, bringing a nice layer of polish and improvements! But that’s not all—this week’s Economic Forum delivered some major news: A free-to-play version of SAGE looks to be on the way, opening up new opportunities!

Meanwhile, the team is actively looking for Shaga testers, so if you want to experience Star Atlas (UE5) on your smartphone, now’s your chance. And don’t forget—the Golden Carnival is quickly approaching its grand finale, meaning time is running out to take part in the event before it wraps up.

Let’s dive right in!

UE5 Patch Is Live

As announced last week, the team released a new patch for their UE5 product with a ton of improvements! For a full overview of all changes, see our previous issue. They also released a short video trailer (see above) showing off the current state of UE5 gameplay, including some of the updates. However, it does not highlight the updates themselves.

Dominic (Community Manager) also posted a video update on this release on his channel.

Economic Forum

Last week, the Econ team hosted their 9th Economic Forum, going into topics such as:

• Updates to the Econ Dashboard
• Early data on FIC & FIC2
• Free to Play SAGE

It was great content, as always, and we recommend that people catch the recording if they want to learn more about the first two subjects. Below, we’ll dive deeper into the last one!

SAGE: Free To Play Variant

During the Economic Forum, Chris (VP of Game Economy) dropped a big surprise: Part of the team is already working on creating a free-to-play SAGE version running on Apollo (or at least a similar testnet setup)!

In Chris’ words, a ragtag group of people, including Chris himself, has been trying to create this in their off-time. It looks promising, and we will likely see a launch sooner than expected!

Gameplay details

The following details were shared regarding gameplay:

• Comes with everything SAGE Labs is offering today (except LP and LP-based mechanics)
• New players all start with the same materials and the same ships: 2 Fimbul Airbikes and a single Fimbul Lowbie.
• At this point, (fake/testnet) ATLAS earnings are only available through Faction Infrastructure Contracts. There is no LP system, and Chris is unsure if they will add that. He likes the elegance of the FICs.
• Ship Crafting will not only be available, but it will be much more expansive than the mainnet version. Most, if not all, ships will be craftable in-game.
• Ships scale very differently in power and costs. The real game scales ships at a power of 5, and in this version, that is 1.5. This means that a Commander ship is (only) 12x more powerful than an XXS in this version

Elaborating on that last point, Chris mentioned he hopes to see players craft their first medium-sized ship within a week or two and their first capital in a month or two.

He stressed that the blockchain infrastructure would be highly centralized, while the game itself is mostly meant as a testbed and should be regarded as an experiment.

Further Plans

The team’s reasons for creating this version of SAGE are:

• The cost of doing it is very low
• Provides experimentation ground for new features
• May help to onboard/reach new players

Chris mentioned that the team is also looking into monetization. Players could duplicate their fleet on the mainnet by buying a Tulle bundle in one go. However, microtransactions or ads are also options. Chris added that he is not really sure about these last two, as he personally doesn’t want to stray too far from the ethos of Star Atlas and Web3.

The plan is to incentivize players to play the game, potentially by offering them a chance to win valuable loot (perhaps through a raffle system).

When asked about botting, Chris noted that it is one of his primary concerns. He has some ideas for it and is working on them.

DAO Council Updates

The first three community-created PIPs (POLIS Improvement Proposals) have been turned into Drafts and are now in Council Review! The Star Atlas DAO Council will be doing a public review this week, to which everyone is invited (to observe).

In total, the Council is hosting two events this week that may be of interest:

• Tuesday 18:00 UTC: The first (public) review of the drafts currently in the PIP Drafts channel
• Friday 15:00 UTC: Open Office Hour, where everyone can ask questions about PIPs, creating PIPs, and anything related to Star Atlas governance. This will be the third consecutive week this event is organized, and they plan to host one every week.

Furthermore, the Council:

• Posted a pinned post in the #pip-drafts channel to better explain what the channel is for, what is expected of posters, and what posters can expect after posting there.
• Made available a glimpse into a Council Meeting (#3) and a
• Expanded the DAO Knowledge Base with up-to-date information on the Star Atlas DAO and the hierarchy of DAOs (Faction, Region).

Mobile Testers Wanted

The team is looking for testers to help them test streaming Star Atlas to a mobile (Android) device. Shaga, a long-time Cloud Gaming partner of Star Atlas, is developing this technology.

Specifically, the team is looking for people who fulfill the following requirements:

• Owns an Android device
• Owns a PC that can run Star Atlas
• Owns a Bluetooth or wired controller

If you’re interested, please fill out this Google Form.

Golden Carnival

Week 14 of the Golden Carnival is a wrap! Star Atlas gambler collectively submitted 1,796,092 tickets, hoping to take home one, or a few, of the 91 prizes! This was the last Ogrika & Busan-sponsored week this season.

Meanwhile, the final Fimbul-sponsored week (15) has started meanwhile! 149 prizes, including various Fimbul ships, are up for grabs.

The week thereafter, week 16, starting next week, will mark the end of this Golden Carnival season! The team plans to end with a bang, organizing a Mega Mystery Week with $400k worth of prizes (in VWAP). Not much is known, but no doubt we’ll learn more this week!

(Not An) SDU Update

During the latest Economic Forum, Chris revealed that the team encountered unexpected issues while adjusting the SDU install time. As a result, the change has been placed back on their to-do list—but not as a top priority. In other words, there’s no clear timeline for when (or if) this update will be implemented.

You’ve reached the end of this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!