Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #99

Welcome to our 99th 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.

Since its release, people have been heads-down playing SAGE Labs. In parallel, the team was heads-down, fixing bugs and making small improvements. But, fortunately for this issue, more happened last week! A highlight was the team publishing their latest Economic Report, covering the 3rd quarter of 2023. However, most newsworthy tidbits you’ll find in this newsletter came from Chip (Director of Game Systems Design) and, to a lesser extent, our very own data runners.

Let’s dive in!

SAGE Labs

SAGE Labs has been live for over a full week, and the team has deployed several patches during that time to fix bugs and introduce a few quality-of-life improvements. For most, the game has been relatively bug-free recently, and the experience has definitely become smoother. If you were still holding out, then now is a great time to jump in!

The team is now shifting gears, and starting work towards SAGE: Starbased, which will bring us a much smoother 3D interface, combat, and Starbase construction. The current (unofficial) target launch seems to be Q1 of next year.

Stats

Meanwhile, we gathered some of the statistics that our data runners have been posting during the week for you here. But before we share those, let’s look at some official numbers from the team.

Last Thursday, when SAGE Labs was live for a week, the team shared the following numbers:

• 5,961 character profiles created
• 3,400,000+ @solana transactions [note: this has only gone up since; see below]
• 3% daily average of Solana transactions
• 20,000 fleets created

Meanwhile, our data runners have extended their dashboard considerably. Below is a chart that shows SAGE Labs has since exceeded 6% of daily Solana transactions!

Another interesting development is that more R4 is produced, but more is used as well. In general, players are becoming self-sufficient. They produce enough R4 for themselves and not much more. You can tell this by the big peak at the far right of the chart. The peak nearly perfectly matches both the total supply and total demand for R4.

For many more charts regarding Star Atlas and SAGE Labs, do check out our dashboard.

Chypto Interview – Metaverse Nomads

This past Sunday, the Metaverse Nomads interviewed Chip (Director of Game Systems Design), and the interview is well worth a watch. Below, we include some relevant tidbits shared there, but if you want to get fully up to speed on what to expect next, check it out!

Next: Starbase Construction & Upgrading

Though things may change, the team is planning to bring Starbase Construction & Upgrading live first. When this goes live, a new game will be created on-chain, and the (at that point) “old” game will no longer allow people to mine resources or scan for SDUs. In other words, people will be kindly asked to proceed to the nearest exit [their CSS] and take their belongings with them.

The reason to do this is clear. Even without combat, the starbases can not just be destroyed with everybody’s resources still on there. It is easier to wipe the sleight clean and let every faction start with just their CSS. All other starbases will then have to be built by that faction’s members.

To incentivize people to do that, the Loyalty Point system will come online alongside the Starbase reset, which will allow people to earn daily ATLAS. During the interview, Chip hinted that the team may also allow you to exchange these for ships, and/or other (undisclosed) perks.

Note that it will take a few months (at least) before this becomes a reality. The reason why the team is currently in favor of releasing this part first is because the on-chain programs for this aspect of gameplay are close to being done. Unfortunately, the same can not yet be said about the programs dealing with combat.

Good to know: The “old game” (current game) will not go offline. It is all on-chain and will simply persist. This means you will have plenty of time to move your assets out of that game when the time comes.

Next: Council Ranks & XP-progression

Less certain than the above, it looks like people will also be able to earn XP. However, the Council Rank system will likely not go live just yet. Instead, the XP will unlock levels until a certain level-cap has been reached (Chip suggested 30). Then, when the Council Rank system does go live later, players will be able to spend their Council Privilege Points (CPPs), enabling them (among other things) to bring more and bigger ships into the game.

If you are not up to speed on the Council Rank System (or XP), then be sure to check out the SAGE – Game Manual (part 2) (page 12 onward).

SDUs

Chip has some interesting ideas to make SDU scanning more interesting, such as:

• Instead of having a 25% chance to find another SDU, 2 minutes after having found a batch, it could encourage people to move more if the chance would instead slowly increase (over more time) from 0 to 25% for that sector.
• Add a heatmap that shows where people are located
• Add different types of SDU (e.g., planet-scans, space-scan) to add an additional layer of complexity

That said, he was very clear that there is no guarantee this will make it into the game, let alone anytime soon. The team has a ton of things on their to-do list, so this may not come to fruition. Regardless, we thought it was an interesting bit to share with you all.

Econ Report – Q3 2023

The team published their latest quarterly report, and this one is -as always- for sure worth a read. If you were struggling with the verbiage and econ-speak in the previous ones, then know that this publication has less of that, and is more accessible in general.

This report really covers the period between the end of Escape Velocity and the start of SAGE Labs. It gives SAGE Labs a great deal of attention and goes into the effects of having a game system available where your decisions actually influence your yield. Furthermore, it focuses on the R4 market, but also on the new markets created through SAGE Labs.

Below, we embedded the majority of the report’s conclusion. If this piques your interest, do give the full report a read-through!

The events that took place over this quarter represent the origin of the Star Atlas player economy. Thriving commodity markets coupled with increased production leading up to the release of SAGE Labs illustrated the wealth discrepancy between factions and the benefits that those on top were able to reap. The population of producers increased as a result, along with the yield of productive assets.

The post-period that captured the first four days of SAGE Labs activity showcased the high demand for R4, specifically fuel, as players worked to stockpile their ships with adequate supplies. Golden ticket production went parabolic as players began recognizing the value of golden ticket crafting. While not mentioned above, ship crafting was less of a priority for players as only 3 Fimbul Airbikes, 2 Calico Maxhog, and 1 VZUS Solos were redeemed during the period.

Econ Report – Q3 2023

Starpath

Starpath launched nearly two weeks ago, and the team shared some stats regarding the performance of the first ten days:

• 235,461 USDC in total sales by referred people
• 1,073 members created a referral link
• 18,421 USDC and 13.5 million ATLAS given to referrers

CORE

Magic Eden has still not listed the CORE Act 2, episode 2, on their website. Meanwhile, the issue is no longer available on the Galactic Marketplace, as the 2-week limited sales window has closed.

The team is looking into it and hopes to have it resolved shortly.

News Tidbits

• The Fimbul Mamba EX has roughly the same supply size as the Fimbul Mamba. That means there will be roughly 5,900 Fimbul Mamba EX ships that can be earned by playing SAGE.
• Chip shared that your council rank (XP) is the overarching progression system for your account. It determines how big your enterprise can be, how many fleets you can have, how many crewmembers you can have operating at once, how big a fleet can be, and more. A new tidbit he revealed is that licenses will be part of that. Players will be able to acquire a license for every single career (data-runner, racing, freighting, etc.), and there will be a progression system associated with that.

Sneak Peeks

The team was kind enough to share some progress made on the modeling of the VZUS solos ship. But, in addition to that, out of an unexpected corner, Sentient Art dropped a ton of images, including two awesome movies, for the Fimbul ECOS Unibomba. Those can be found on their ArtStation website, and we warmly recommend going there and checking those out!