This is our 16th newsletter.
Factions
As there was some confusion about the exploratory nature of the USTUR this past week, Danny (CPO) explained that exploration will be a full career path, and like all career paths, there will be equal benefits regardless which faction you select. He added that the best career profession would be someone who can source from all factions and then combine into one configuration. All citizens of each faction should have equal advantages when approaching the faction agnostic career paths such as exploration (data validation).
The advantages of each faction are solely based on their proximity to local resources that go into specific technology crafting. So, technically you could buy ships and components from any faction but being a citizen of a certain faction gives you cheaper access (no tariffs) and the ability to level up and craft everything offered through their local licensing system. To create the best possible exploration ship/fleet you would need to source from all factions to be prepared for all circumstances.
ATLAS staking
ATLAS staking will roll out with the new marketplace program. Both are still tentatively scheduled to launch at the end of Q1.
Development
According to Chip (aka Chypto - Game Systems Designer), the ship design and art pipeline are already efficient and can produce output fairly easily. They are trying to finish their ship lineup across all manufacturers that are affiliated with the major factions. He mentioned Busan as an example of a manufacturer that currently has no ships on the marketplace just yet. So, their ships are a priority for them to finalize and release.
As for the UE5 pipeline, they admitted that this is more labor intensive. They have experienced some growing pains getting the first few ships into the 3D engine, as they had to establish their processes, metrics, and solutions to issues as they arise. Metrics are important to get right, as players need to be able to walk through the interior of a ship, and the ship itself has to also fit on a landing pad in the Showroom. Additionally they have to account for weapon sizes and gimbaling, fitting modules into the interiors, mock up VFX, animations and rigging (making sure there is no clipping) and sound FX, to just name a few.
As the team gets more experience with these processes, we can expect that this will go more smoothly and therefore will be sped up over time.
Showroom
Multiplayer is targeted close to the post launch of the showroom module and the backend efforts for it are already underway.
When the showroom launches, among the first available features are:
- controllable first person POV
- ship summoning
- interior ship navigation
Assets
The main factor that determines a ship’s rarity is based on availability of the various resources required according to the ship’s blueprint, and in which zones these can be found. Eventually, it will be based on total universal rarity in comparison to each other, but until that system is online, this is just a projection based on an element heat map of the galaxy and the simulated population.