Welcome to our 251st 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 was relatively quiet on the news front, but we did learn more about some changes being considered for SAGE C4. The team is exploring a simpler, more flexible ship component system that could replace thousands of ship-specific variants with reusable components. Meanwhile, Unique Crew is presenting new challenges for crafting, prompting the team to rethink how Crew members are assigned to jobs. We also got a first look at the upcoming Claim Stake UI overhaul, while work continues toward the next PTR reset.
Let’s dive in!
SAGE C4
Reusable Ship Components
John (Product Manager) shared a new direction the team is testing for ship components. The current C4 catalog has roughly 2,000 named component variants, largely because each one is tied to a specific ship. Turning all of those into crafting recipes and Council Rank unlocks would make the system rather difficult to manage.
The alternative is to organize components by size and tier. A medium engine could then move between compatible ships instead of being crafted for one named hull. Players could even install it on a larger ship, though it would work less effectively there.
That differs from the ship-specific configuration sets discussed last year, but resembles the original SAGE design in one important respect: components were always meant to be swapped, upgraded, modified, and crafted. Manufacturer characteristics would remain, while different weapon and component families could still have their own effects and Council Rank interactions.
Council Rank work prompted this experiment in the first place. Once the team began building ship-specific unlock lists, the size of the catalog became hard to ignore. None of this is final, and John could not confirm whether the new model will make it into Phase 4.
Crew and Crafting
Unique Crew brings its own complication. Each Crew member will eventually have an individual on-chain account instead of being part of one combined quantity. A large crafting job cannot simply assign thousands of Crew at once if every account has to be included in the transaction.
The team is looking at an escrow-style factory pool as a possible solution. Players would deposit Crew at a Starbase, then assign crafting jobs from that pool without moving every account in and out again. Active Crew at Starbases was already part of the original SAGE design. The difference is that the workflow now has to accommodate individually owned Crew.
The details are still being worked out. The team’s aim is to let transaction processing replace some artificial crafting delays without making players approve a long series of signatures for one job.
The Next Reset
There is still no date for the next C4 reset. Three areas remain in the way: Claim Stake economics and rent, Starbase destruction and eviction behavior, and Council Rank nodes. The economic work depends on Council Rank being finalized. After that, the build still needs to run on the development server for several days before the team can announce a date.
A program upgrade may reach the current Phase 3 build first. At this point, another testing round looks more likely than a direct move into Phase 4 and real-asset testing.
Claim Stake UI Overhaul
Amongst many other UI improvements, Danny (CPO) has been working on overhauling the Claim Stake UI. Instead of just selecting the planet and then the Claim Stake Tier, you will soon select a plot on an actual 3D representation of the planet of your choosing. Each plot has a tier attached, and that will determine the Claim Stake tier you will (want to) use.
That is it for this week! Thanks for reading, and until the next!
