Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #83

Welcome to our 83rd newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter is published by Aephia Industries and focuses entirely on Star Atlas. Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.

The Economy is here! The team just moved the needle in a significant way, overnight kickstarting the player-driven economy! This is clearly the biggest headline from last week, but there is more! ATLAS offerings from the team are back on the Marketplace as well!

Exciting stuff, so let’s jump right in!

Team adds Ships back to ATLAS Market

For most of 2022, the team offered their ships in both the ATLAS and USDC markets. After their runway was drastically shortened late last year -due to the collapse of FTX- they decided to pull their ATLAS offering entirely and rely on USDC only for the time being.

Early last week, on Monday, June 5th, the team made their ships available in ATLAS again. They did this by moving 50% of their remaining supply from the USDC market to the ATLAS market.

For the first time ever, they also applied a 20% discount to the ATLAS price. This is remarkable, because, contrary to the Start Sequence campaign (which saw discounts up to 80%), this discount does not have a fixed end date. It will remain in effect until further notice.

For those doing the math themselves, it is good to know that this 20% discount was calculated over a rolling 7-day average during the last few days of May. Their article states that the team will be readjusting their ATLAS prices periodically.

Superphoenix Sale

Since the Start Sequence event from last year, the team has 3 different titans on offer (1 each, for the three ships unveiled so far), for $5 million each. In an interesting turn of events, the team moved their Fimbul ECOS Superphoenix from the USDC to the ATLAS market, while applying an 80% discount!

With the recent turmoil in the crypto-markets and subsequent price-drop of ATLAS, the real discount at the moment of writing this is close to 83%. This means that this Superphoenix can be yours for the ATLAS equivalent of roughly $860k.

In the Superphoenix’s case, they did specifically mention this discount would only be available for a limited time!

The Economy is here!

In a move that surprised many, the team pulled the lever and kickstarted the player-driven economy!

This marks a major milestone in the lifecycle of Star Atlas! We have been anticipating this moment ever since the release of their White Paper, and just like that, with little fanfare, and no announcement prior to the change, the team moved the controls of R4 production (i.e. the 4 resources to maintain ships: Fuel, Ammunition, Toolkits & Food) into the hands of the players.

The team had a few surprises for us last week, but this was the big one! Overnight (literally, if you live in the EU), the team put a stop to their infinite supply of R4 on the Galactic Marketplace. Instead, they capped it so that -they calculated- there would be enough to last the community about 30 days (of restocking ships in SCORE/Faction Fleet).

Of course, this remaining supply was quickly bought up by savvy investors, and panicking players.

However, there seems to be little cause for panic. The team made sure that players could generate enough R4 through gameplay alone. Clearly, the marketplace will remain an essential tool to distribute the R4 from those who have a surplus to those who have a deficit, but those 30-day stockpiles were really just to ease the transition.

How to get R4?

There were two ways to get R4 before this change, and the team boosted both of them significantly right before their announcement. You can:

• Participate in Escape Velocity and hunt for loot. Each Copper tier loot item that contains R4 now contains 8 times as much of that resource! Note that the drop rate has not been changed, but only the amount dropped. For many players, who own a small fleet, spending a short amount of time daily in Escape Velocity is all they need to keep their fleet supplied.
• Stake Claim Stakes in Faction Claims and earn a passive R4 income. The team boosted the output of these Claim stakes between 4.8-8.8 times, depending on the Tier.

If both of these are not an option, or you lack the time (EV) or money (Claim Stakes), then you will have no alternative but to hunt for the cheapest offer of R4 on the marketplace!

Faction Claims

Though Escape Velocity rewards were multiplied by a factor of 8, the team went with a more granular approach with the Claim Stakes. Instead of boosting their output by a fixed factor, they chose a different multiplier based on the Claim Stake tier instead. Here are these multipliers:

The team did not give a clear reason for this more granular approach, but it seems likely the Economics team used this moment to fine-tune some numbers.

30 Days vs 12 Hours

To enable players to adjust without interruption, an equivalent of a 30-day supply for Faction Fleet ships will stay available for sale until the R4 amount runs out.

Team’s Medium article

Though the team left a capped supply of R4 on the marketplace, enough to keep Faction Fleet running for 30 days, this supply was bought up by players in less than 12 hours.

Michael (CEO) expressed some surprise at the speed at which the capped supply was bought up, but both Eric (Sr. Director of Game Economy) & Chris (Director of Game Economy) shared that they fully anticipated the supply would not last 24 hours.

Announcement

A good few people expressed their displeasure with the lack of a longer period to prepare for this impactful change. The moment the team shared their announcement, the changes were already in effect. For some, this meant they found themselves unable to stockpile R4 from the team.

In response, both Michael and Chris shared that they wanted to prevent people from hoarding so much R4 that the economy would run off of these stockpiles. This would put the player-driven economy at risk, or rather, it would effectively stop it in its tracks. The end effect would be that the player-driven economy would not kick in for months -if not longer- because nobody would actually participate in gameplay to earn R4.

ATLAS Market & Discount

As with their ships (see previous topic), the team moved half of their current offering of Claim Stakes to the ATLAS Market. Here too, they implemented a 20% discount on their ATLAS offering for the foreseeable future.

The Tier 2 Claim Stakes on the ATLAS Market were sold out within 24 hours after the team posted their announcement. At the moment of writing, all other tiers still have remaining stock.

Interestingly, a Tier 2 Claim Stake costs 7.6x more than a Tier 1 (team pricing – USDC) and, with the new numbers, produces “only” 6.7x more resources in Faction Claims. However, looking at the bigger picture, Tier 2+ Claim Stakes will receive different treatment than Tier 1 Claim Stakes when mining in SAGE is introduced (which won’t happen this year).

Claim Stake Supply

It’s important to realize that this team’s supply of Claim Stakes does not represent the future total supply. Players will be able to craft Claim Stakes themselves later on. But, even disregarding that fact, the team’s current supply represents only their Start Sequence allocation from earlier this year. Back when they added this supply to the Galactic Marketplace, they noted that they intend to sell additional Claim Stakes down the line to newcomers in the ecosystem.

Stats

The team shared some stats on Twitter, looking at the state of affairs 24 hours after their announcement. In Escape Velocity, they saw a 29% increase in scanning activity and a 25% increase in concurrent users.

At that point in time, they also sold (of the current supply):

• 39% of Claim Stakes – Tier 1
• 79% of Claim Stakes – Tier 2 (sold out ATLAS market)
• 28% of Claim Stakes – Tier 3
• 14% of Claim Stakes – Tier 4
• 29% of Claim Stakes – Tier 5

Note that the team also sold these during their Start Sequence campaign -and they have been on the marketplace since- so not all of these sales were made in the 24 hour-window after their announcement.

Hacker House NYC

On June 10th (18:30 UTC), Michael joined the Solana Hacker House in New York City, to join a panel called “Building IP Through NFTs”. Here he shared how Star Atlas is empowering builders with their open IP Build program.

Unfortunately, there is no(t yet a) recording available. It’s awesome to see the team show up during events like these, however!

Interviews & Appearances

The last few weeks, Michael -and Miguel (Chief of Staff)- have been popping up left and right to do interviews, join Spaces and show off Showroom Release 2.1. In addition, some content creators have had a good deal of fun with the Showroom as well!

A few videos potentially worth watching are:

• Paul Barron Network – Star Atlas VR & Augmented Reality
• Juice Team – Star Atlas – Flying all 49 Spaceships (Cagyjan by himself)
• Brycent – Star Atlas Showroom w/SW4GN3R

Something that may also interest you is this Showroom R2.1 Flight Instruction video made by Donovan (aka Ronin – ATMTA team member)

Beauty Shots

As always (when the team has them), we wrap up this week’s newsletter with some of the WIP/design shots shared by the team over the last week. Enjoy and until next week!