Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #229

Welcome to our 229th 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 short update starts off with a first real look at how Claim Stakes and terrestrial operations will function in SAGE C4. Alongside that, Holosim Chapter 2 rewards were finally distributed after a last round of corrections and wallet verification, while the team also shared an updated picture of where Holosim development is heading next.

Let’s dive in!

SAGE C4

After the Crafting Habs reveal two weeks ago, the team shared a first-look video of how Claim Stakes will function in C4:

During last week’s Atlas Brew (#203), José (Lead Lore & Embercoil GM) walked through the video and provided commentary. We got to see the flow for placing a stake on a planet, building an extraction and processing hub, and attaching extraction and processing infrastructure to these. Along with some of the numbers shown, this is the most practical look so far at how terrestrial operations are meant to feel.

Some new information gleaned from the video, and shared by José, is that the placement of buildings actually affects a building’s efficiency. The further away a building is from its hub, the less performant it will be.

José and John (Product Manager) also shared that the team is busy planning a Town Hall to go in-depth on the upcoming SAGE C4 PTR launch.

Holosim

The first Holosim story of the week was the reward cleanup we were still waiting on after last week’s issue. John published a corrected Holosim Season 1 Chapter 2 reward post that materially changed the table: the Opal Bitboat was removed from ranks 4 through 10, and the total pool was revised to $10,820.99 in ships. He also extended the wallet-linking deadline to Friday, May 8th, and the distribution target to Saturday, May 9th.

Michael (CEO) later explained why this had dragged on. The team still had to reconcile eligibility, give players time to link their mainnet wallet to their Holosim account, and then remove ineligible wallets plus players who never submitted an address before the final send. John pushed one last reminder on the final evening, pointing players to the Manage Account flow and the Chapter Rewards field. A few hours later, he confirmed that Chapter 2 prizes had been airdropped.

TLDR: Check your inventory, because the Chapter 2 (Phase 1) rewards were dropped this past Friday!

If you expected to receive something, but you’ve got nothing to claim in your Star Atlas (website) Inventory, then you likely did not link your main wallet to your Holosim account. In that case, your prizes have been given to the person next in line.

That was not all, though. The same Atlas Brew #203 also gave us a much better sense of what John wants to improve next in Holosim itself. The near-term target is responsiveness. He said the team wants to remove the current 7-second fleet-state cooldown and other middleware delay in command view by reading more directly from the RPC stream, so combat, repairs, warp, and dock or undock feedback feel far closer to real time.

Alongside that, John also outlined the next layer of gameplay additions. The upcoming store release should include drones that act as fleet-buff ships with zero crew requirement, with some of them expected to come through Battle Pass daily check-ins rather than crew. He also said new ships should start appearing in the marketplace as an experimental release. On top of that, the game will, from now on, be able to spawn more dynamic events based on quests, location, XP, and player reputation or threat, including derelict onboarding encounters and more reactive opposition in hostile space.

Perhaps more important is the fact that there won’t be any combat-related achievements for now. It’s not clear if this also means there are no further prizes to be earned for the remainder of this chapter (which will go on for at least the next 5 weeks).

News Bits

But that is not all! Here are some more news bits to wrap up this week’s issue:

• The 7th Iris’ Blessing Raffle did not take place this past Friday; it will instead take place on Monday, May 11th, at 18:00 UTC.
• The form through which you could share your preference for which five community members should get a seat at the table for the Embercoil campaign is closing on Monday, May 11th, at 21:00 UTC.

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