Welcome to our 158th 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.
This week in Star Atlas, we marked a major milestone with the first MEGA Week of this year’s Golden Carnival! Alongside the festivities, the team introduced a few significant updates to SAGE, adjusting scanning mechanics to slow down the process and reduce the need for Solana transactions. Additionally, responding to longstanding community requests, the MUD faction saw a reshuffling of resources across four systems. And to top it all off, the team launched its first-ever Black Friday sale!
Let’s dive in!
Star Atlas: “Here’s a first-look sneak peek of Starbases in-game” [Source]
SDU Scanning Update
This past week, a few hours after the Atlas Brew wrapped on Wednesday, the team rolled out two big changes to SAGE Labs: Starbased.
The first was a change to the MUD minable resource locations, which we’ll discuss below. The second introduced several changes to scanning mechanics. Here’s how these break down:
- Scan Cooldown: The time between scans has increased 6x (e.g., the Fimbul Airbike’s cooldown went from 131 seconds to 786 seconds).
- Food Consumption: The Food required per scan is now 6x higher (e.g., the Fimbul Airbike now consumes 22 Food per scan, up from 3.6).
- SDUs Found Per Scan: The amount of SDUs gained from a successful scan is also 6x higher (e.g., from 1 to 6 for the Fimbul Airbike).
- Sector SDU Limits: The maximum SDUs available in a sector has increased by 6x (from 1,200 to 7,200).
- SDU Refill Rate: The rate at which SDUs refill in a sector is 6x slower (from 600 seconds to 3,600 seconds).
What This Means for Players
The overall gameplay experience remains largely balanced. While scans now take longer and cost more Food, they also yield more SDUs. Here’s the practical impact:
• Efficiency: On average, players should collect about the same total number of SDUs per day as before. However, each individual scan is more impactful, reducing the number of scans required.
• Transaction Costs: Because scanning occurs less frequently (due to the longer cooldown), Solana transaction fees are effectively reduced by 6x. This is especially helpful for players with smaller asset portfolios who may have previously struggled with high transaction costs.
MUD Resource Map Adjusted
In response to longstanding feedback from MUD players regarding resource distribution in the Galia map, the team implemented two significant changes last week:
- MRZ-3 and MRZ-7 Swap
- MRZ-3: Previously had Iron Ore [R1.5] and Biomass [R1.5]; now has Carbon [R1.5] and Copper [R1.5].
- MRZ-7: Previously had Carbon [R1.5] and Copper [R1.5]; now has Iron Ore [R1.5] and Biomass [R1.5].
- MRZ-4 and MRZ-6 Swap
- MRZ-4: Previously had Hydrogen [R1.5] and Copper [R1.5]; now only has Hydrogen [R1.5].
- MRZ-6: Previously had Hydrogen [R2]; now offers Hydrogen [R2] and Copper [R2].
These swaps aim to address imbalances in resource availability on the MUD side of the map, providing better resource diversity.
Note that with these changes, MRZ-6 now boasts two 2 (200%) richness resources—Hydrogen and Copper—making it the first system of its kind!
Star Atlas – Golden Carnival 2024 – Schedule
Golden Carnival
Last week saw the conclusion of the first Mega Week in the Golden Carnival’s history! A record 5,641,292 tickets were submitted, and 190 prizes—worth $400k in VWAP found their way into the hands of their new owners! If you missed the live show and want to experience it, Dominic (Community Manager) made the recording of his Twitch stream available.
For this week, week 5, the Pearce & Calico week is making its first comeback! With 199 prizes, this week offers the biggest number of individual prizes of any Golden Carnival 2624 week, although the Mega Week offers double the value, of course. You can start submitting your tickets right now! Around the time of publication, almost 500k tickets had already been submitted.
The official introduction text for this week reads:
The first cycle of the Golden Carnival has concluded, bestowing magnificent vessels upon the daring Captains who risked their precious Golden Tickets. But fear not—our galactic celebration is far from over! This is merely the beginning, and soon you might find yourself among the honored winners as the cycle of gifts renews. Join us, Captain. Submit your tickets for a chance to claim this week’s mighty treasures, straight from the harbors of the MUD domain manufacturers. May the cosmic currents favor your journey!
Star Atlas – Black(hole) Friday – 50% off Fimbul BYOS Ranger
Black Friday Promotion
The team launched their first-ever Black Friday promotion this year:
To celebrate the SDU improvements, we’re offering an exclusive Black Friday deal on one of the best ships for scanning: the Fimbul BYOS Ranger! From Friday, 29 November 2024 at 19:00 (UTC) to Monday, 2 December 2024 at 19:00 (UTC), we’ll be discounting a limited supply of Fimbul BYOS Rangers by 50% of their origination price!
With an origination price of 2,794.50 USDC, the Fimbul BYOS Ranger was offered for 1,397.25 USDC (and its ATLAS equivalent of 417,090 ATLAS) during this 3-day window.
Though Rangers were mostly offered around the 900 USDC mark on the secondary market (four were available at the time of publication within the 914-1000 USDC range), the team seems to expect increased interest in these relatively recently launched Data Runner ships. This likely was related to their announcement last week that RFRs will launch soon and that the RFR recipe will require SDUs.
However, the team has not sold a single Fimbul BYOS Ranger during this discount window, which seems to suggest that the team’s internal expectations and projections did not match the community’s.
Sneak Peeks
It’s been a while since we had any sneak peeks, but the team did not disappoint this past week! We not only got an image of a Starbase in space (see above), but the team shared a very early WIP video of them flying (a Calico Scud) over what appears to be an ice planet/terrain.
That is it for this week! See you in 7 days!