Welcome to our 146th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.
Another relatively quiet week is behind us, but that also means we’re one week closer to the IMPACT Summit! This week, we’ve got some small updates on Breakpoint, the aforementioned IMPACT Summit, Crew & SAGE, Council Elections, the Economic Forum, and the Naabathon!
Let’s dive straight in!
Breakpoint ’24
Last week, the full speaker schedule for Breakpoint was released, and the big surprise was that Star Atlas did not get a slot (despite asking for one). Michael and the team are clearly disappointed, but the community also spoke out against this unexpected turn of events.
We’ve learned that other Web3 games have also been denied time at the conference. It appears the organization deliberately chose only to allow a small handful of Web3 gaming-related sessions this year. With many expecting games to play a big (if not the biggest) role in the widespread adoption of the blockchain, this is definitely an interesting choice.
Breakpoint ’24 – Gamer Village
Gamer Village
As one of the headline sponsors of Breakpoint, Star Atlas will still have a big presence at the conference. The team will take up considerable space in Breakpoint’s Gamer Village and show off the latest and upcoming UE5 gameplay!
Additionally, during the second day of Breakpoint, the team is organizing their own full-day side event just one floor below the Breakpoint venue, dubbed the Star Atlas IMPACT Summit!
Note: A record 30 ATMTA team members will attend Breakpoint and the IMPACT Summit this year!
IMPACT – Star Atlas Summit 2024
IMPACT Summit ’24
During the Atlas Brew last week, the team shared a few more tidbits about what to expect during the upcoming full-day Star Atlas conference on September 21st.
The IMPACT Summit will take place on the 3rd floor of the Suntec Convention Center, one floor below the Breakpoint Conference. There will be two large spaces: one stage area where presentations occur and another for networking. The team had an open call to projects who wanted to participate, and six teams responded. These teams will have a presence at the venue.
The event is roughly 7 hours long and will feature (among other things):
- Introduction of the day
- A panel with UE5 directors on how to build an immersive universe
- A panel with IP builders + individual presentations from its participants
- MetaGravity presentation
- Keynote from Michael (CEO)
- Fireside chat about Star Atlas economics (Chris + Michael)
- Fireside chat with the three founders, Jacob Floyd (CTO), Danny Floyd (CPO) & Michael Wagner (CEO) about the vision of Star Atlas
- DAO Panel with a special guest – moderated by José (Chief Noot)
- Naabathon – Winner announcements
That day, there is also a tournament going on on a new 4-vs-4-vs-4 Surge map called Gateway, which is a space station in orbit around the planet Ioki. If everything works out, it will be streamed on Twitch.
Meanwhile, the team received around 600 registrations. They are also expecting a lot of foot traffic from the Breakpoint area. Lastly, the event will be live-streamed on YouTube!
Star Atlas Crew
Crew
On Saturday, Dominic (Sr. Community Manager) announced that the team had fixed the bottlenecks that prevented the easy transfer of Crew Cards between SAGE and your wallet. He also shared the date when Starbased will transition to the new Crew system, which will take place on Thursday, September 12. An exact time has not yet been communicated, and it’s unclear if the team will be able to do so.
Everyone’s fleets will be auto-disbanded on that day, and all ships will be returned to the player’s Central Space Station (CSS). Anything still present on that fleet (Fuel, Ammo, Cargo) will be destroyed in the process, so you may want to dock your fleets and empty them before the migration starts. On top of this, crafting jobs will be aborted, resulting in failed crafting projects.
After the migration is complete, you will have to recreate your fleets, now using Crew Cards as the actual crew. The old system, where the crew was just an innate number your ships supplied, will be gone forever.
Please prepare for this moment by moving your Crew Cards into SAGE!
Economic Forum #4
Last Thursday, the Econ team hosted another Economic Forum, which StarAtlasTV recorded. They went over a great number of Crew statistics before switching to ATLAS emissions. Most interestingly, perhaps, was the discussion at the end around Council RFRs. The team and Chris (Head of Game Economy) have been considering whether adding Council RFR would be smart. Chris hopes it will benefit the smaller players, much like it did before Starbased arrived. Most likely, if introduced, the team will likely introduce different types of Council RFR this time around.
Nothing is certain yet, but those listening seemed overwhelmingly in favor, and Chris seems willing to try it out!
Council Elections
The first round of the council elections kicks off this Friday, September 14th! The community will pick its top 12 candidates from among the 22, who will then proceed to round 2.
The team is expected to introduce a novel on-chain voting system, dubbed Ranked-choice Voting, or more specifically, Single Transferable Vote.
This system will allow you to vote on your top X candidates, where you define X! You could select all 22 candidates if you like [which would be a good idea!] and put them in the order of your preference. This way, your vote will not go to waste if your preferred candidate won’t make it. Any candidate with at least 1/12th of the voting power behind them is automatically in. If no single candidate achieves this, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed. The votes of everyone who voted for this person will now be assigned to their number 2 candidate.
Next up, the same check is done again, and this process is repeated until the top 12 candidates are chosen. Thanks to this system, you can safely vote for the underdog, knowing that if they do not make it, your vote will–at full strength (PVP)–carry over to the next candidate on your list.
The prime benefit is that no strategic voting is necessary, and the underdog may prove popular enough to win now that people will actually vote for them.
Someone made a great video featuring the animal kingdom to explain this concept properly. It’s well worth a watch!
Naabathon – Star Atlas’ first-ever hackathon
Naabathon
The first-ever Star Atlas hackathon—the Naabathon—is over! Well over 25 teams submitted projects, and the Community team shared that the vast majority of these are from well-known, long-time community members.
During the Atlas Brew, Dominic shared that many lessons were learned, which they hope to apply to the next one. For this first round, there was not enough adoption outside of the core community, something they hope to improve in the future.
The team will now review the submissions, ask the participating teams any questions that may arise during this process, and then declare the winners in each category during the IMPACT Summit in Singapore!
You’ve reached the end of this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!