It is Community Week, and that means the first of the three Town Halls that the team planned for Star Atlas Summer just wrapped up!
Below, we’re providing a summary/report of the whole event, capturing all the news shared.
On stage are Santi (VP of Community & Ecosystem), Dominic (Marketing Manager), Michael (CEO), and Chip (VP of Game Systems). Brad (Gameplay Engineer) joins for the Galia Game Mode demo.
Star Atlas Summer – Town Hall Part 1
Holosim
First on Holosim closing tomorrow: Michael clarified that, while the beta season is closing, Holosim will remain playable until the official release of Season 1!
Cinematic
The team showed off the cinematic they are releasing today. It’s the same one they showed us last year at the IMPACT Summit. The movie will be officially launched later today as part of the UE5 Patch announcement.
Interesting note: Chip shares that Brigitte, his wife, did the voice of Joni in this cinematic.
Star Atlas – UE5 Title Menu UI
UE5
This is the 5th UE5 patch the team is releasing this year.
The Title Menu screen was overhauled and now shows a view of the ONI CSS.
Chip starts listing off the big highlights of this patch:
- Title menu refresh
- Player progression
- Reward Airdrop (Crew packs)
- Matchmaking Gunplay & Racing
- New load-out systems
- New pickup system in the arena
- Spectator mode
- New track
- New coat of paint on Paizul’s Arena
- New gameplay loops in Galia Game mode
- Easy anticheat integration
- Improved gamepad and joystick support
Chip and Dom show off the new Inventory and how to customize a character.
Star Atlas – UE5 Loadout UI
Loadout
Start with four available slots on the weapon loadout wheel. Weapons take different amounts of slots (a shotgun takes up 3 slots).
- At level 5, you unlock two more slots
- At level 10, you unlock the last two slots
As you progress, you’ll unlock more slots on the weapon-loadout wheel. There are also two slots where you can drop in grenades to the side, and 3 slots at the bottom for the bubbie, sole jettie, and palm jettie. These can be replaced with upgraded versions.
You can create 3 weapon loadout presets, and you can switch these in-game (will take effect next respawn).
Star Atlas – UE5 Rewards UI
Rewards
You progress per Character Group (species & gender pair). There are 14 groups in total, and you’ll need to work on several to get access to the rewards:
- Silver 5 Card Pack — Level 20 (Prestige 1) with 4 different character groups
- Gold 5 Card Pack — Level 20 (Prestige 1) with 8 different character groups
- Platinum 5 Card Pack — Level 20 (Prestige 1) with 12 different character groups
- Diamond 5 Card Pack — Prestige 10 times across 12 different character groups (minimum Crew Card level is epic)
You can level up a group in both gunplay & racing. As you level up a Crew Group, you’ll unlock a different reward at every level, up to level 20. At level 20 is when you hit Prestige level 1, at which point you can level again (20 levels) to reach Prestige level 2.
Star Atlas – UE5 Crew Level UI
The rewards for the first three levels are:
- Level 1 – Balance Bubbie, Balanced Palms, Balanced Soles, GAN Kinetic Pistol & GAN Kinetic Auto Rifle (you start at level 1, so this is not really a leveling reward)
- Level 2 – Starter Grenade & GAN Energy Pistol
- Level 3 – Dash Soles
Star Atlas – UE5 Inventory – Weapons UI
Weapons
All the weapons are looking better, with improved wear & tear. The Gatling Gun & the Sniper Rifle got the most love in this patch.
Weapon stats are now shown in the Weapons overview of the Inventory section.
Star Atlas – UE5 Play Menu UI
Matchmaking & Gaining XP
The Join Session screen now displays a list of dedicated sessions across the different regions in the world. There are two weekly game modes that you can join, one for Gunplay and one for Racing. There are sessions for both of these. To get XP, you need to log in with a wallet, and you need to be playing in one of these two matchmaking sessions.
Paizul’s Arena
Both the level and the gunplay were improved. Issues were fixed, but most were quality-of-life improvements.
The arena now shows faction colors in the respective Faction sections. The crowd is throwing confetti, and there are scorch marks on the walls.
There is a new Spectator mode. When you die, it will take you 8 seconds to respawn. While waiting, you will be able to spectate your team.
There are no more weapon pickups, as you start with those you own (and have to level up to unlock more). However, you need ammo for it. So, beyond the standard ammo pickups, there are new _Heavy Omni Ammo Pickup_s (purple glow). When you pick these up, you get 2 magazines for every single weapon you brought along. It’s also the only way to get sniper ammo.
Star Atlas – UE5 Paizul Arena – Heavy Omni Ammo Pickup
Parts of the level can be destroyed.
Jettie boots look different. The color of the flames now signals what they have equipped.
Star Atlas – UE5 Paizul Arena – Match End Progression
There are a bunch of different bonuses to XP, such as killstreak XP events.
The scoreboard was overhauled. Now there are assists shown beyond kills and deaths.
If you use a higher rarity crew member, you get bonus XP for that (+X%).
On the persistence of progression, Chip mentioned that this has not been decided at this point. He did add, just to be sure, that players won’t be leveling up their crew cards here. You are leveling up character groups on your Epic Online Services account.
Star Atlas – UE5 Exinade – Racing
Exinade – Racing
Next up, the team shows off Racing!
The team added a brand new track that replaces Track B. It is inspired by the Sogmian house Exinade; therefore, it is called Exinade. Blake (level designer) is the mastermind behind getting this level blocked out (early phase).
This game mode has looping races you can join at any time. Races are up to 6 people, and you’ll earn more XP for more people finishing after you.
Star Atlas – UE5 Exinade – Race End Progression
Galia – Missions
Brad is showing off the latest additions and improvements in the Galia game mode. Note that Galia is still single-player so far. The network team still has work to do on introducing multiplayer.
The main new addition is missions. There are three types:
- Data — Transport data. It is faster to transport Data on a ship, as they can go faster than light.
- Requisition — You have to source the given commodity and bring it back
- Bounties — You get the name of the criminal, their threat level (ship size), their crime, and where they were last seen
Star Atlas – UE5 – Missions
Brad shows off the new Pearce X5 ship transformations while flying towards where the mission he picked up directed him.
Now, weapons fire at the crosshair that shows when using Vjoy (V to toggle this on/off)
Colin created the planets in his spare time (still in college). He worked on a massive update that will come later, as the team did not have time to test it properly. The new system is way more performant, and it fixes foliage issues (floating).
Star Atlas – UE5 – Galia Game Mode
Brad explains that he needs to switch to scanner mode to determine his destination. After he does this, there is a clear Bounty Location marker on his screen.
A new improvement is that if you have something targeted and get close enough, you will drop out of subwarp automatically. Brad demonstrates this in-game, drops out of subwarp, and immediately engages his Bounty.
Star Atlas – UE5 – Galia Game Mode – Completing Missions
With “J”, you can open your journal and see what missions you performed.
There are also random encounters that can show up when you ping (scan), which are random mini-missions.
The patch is live right now!
Looking Forward
Michael wraps up the Town Hall by sharing that they are now transitioning a lot of product side team members from Gunplay, Racing, and the Galia Game mode to Fleet Command. The goal is to get this finished and get it up to C4 parity level.
This doesn’t mean that Gunplay, Racing, or Galia mode won’t see updates, but the focus will be on Fleet Command.
Michael is feeling really good about where the team’s at right now.
That’s it for the first Town Hall of the Star Atlas Summer! See you in 2 weeks!