Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #172

Welcome to our 172nd 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.

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Last week, a small delegation from the team visited GDC in San Francisco to showcase and promote Star Atlas. Meanwhile, the development team successfully launched the UE5 March Patch, and the DAO completed nominations and kicked off elections for the second-ever DAO Council!

Plus, we’ve got plenty of exciting sneak peeks and additional news updates to share!

Let’s dive in!

DAO Council Elections

Last week, seven community members stepped up and nominated themselves for a role on the Council. With the 1st term coming to an end soon (April 11th), from now on, all eyes are focused on these candidates and how they will perform in the Election, which kicked off earlier today!

The Election PIP, using Single Transferrable Vote (STV) like last time, is open from Monday, March 24th, until April 6th. Afterward, the newly elected Council Members will be given access to the Council channels on Discord and invited to a joint meeting with the Term 1 Council members.

While the Election PIP contains some information on the candidates, there is more! This time, the nomination form included additional questions for the candidates, and all those questions and answers can be found in a much longer article on the DAO’s Knowledge Base.

Special Election Brew

The coming Atlas Brew (March 26th) will be focused on the Council Elections. During this “Meet the DAO Council Candidates” Brew, each candidate will be given the chance to present themselves to the Star Atlas community and share why they should be elected for this term. The Community Team will be putting together a set of questions they will ask each candidate.

Star Atlas – Busan Pulse (added to the game with the March patch)

Star Atlas – March UE5 Patch

During the Atlas Brew with special guest Chip (VP of Game Product) this past Wednesday, the team rolled out the latest March patch for Star Atlas on the Epic Games Store.

We listed the highlights of this patch in our previous issue. Now that this new version has launched, however, the team has published the full patch notes for your viewing pleasure. Not previously known upgrades that may interest some of you:

• Upgraded to the latest version (5.5) of the underlying UE5 engine (from 5.4)
• Improved Nanobot animations (something the team really wants to lean into to make SA more distinct from other shooters in VFX as well)
• We’ve learned the name of the new (white box) map: Uru Arena
• Work on Fleet Command continues: “Faster load times and real-time warp VFX tied to blockchain Warp, Subwarp, and Mine actions.”

You can update the game today and jump into all of the new and polished action!

WolvesDEN – Star Atlas [source: X]

GDC Presence

This past week, the 2025 edition of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) took place in San Francisco. A small Star Atlas delegation, including ATMTA’s Francesca, VP of Marketing, was there to represent our community.

Francesca shared her insights with us about everything that unfolded at the event:

• We had great events at GDC that generated nice hype, excitement and content: WolvesDEN Monday night with deathmatch tournaments, playing our latest release date content, lots of great hype and content from big web3 creators with Sam, Dub, Iceyyy and more
• We also helped support and attended the Solana Panel summit, where Michael had a speaking session about Star Atlas vision, co-creation and marketplace, features and development ecosystem, along with a gaming station to try out our latest patch including gun game, Busan Pulse and more content
• Awesome feedback and excitement around high fidelity characters, ship and world, great controls especially in our arenas, gun game, and overall Galia experience.
• GDC covered hot topics around co-creation and AI, which worked well to drive outreach around our early AI integration into building an immersive, massive world and NPC / Onboarding agent enhancements. Co-creation worked seamlessly into our discussions focused on our builder, crafting and creator focus

She references the WolvesDEN, one of the side events in San Francisco during the GDC, organized by the WolvesDAO, a prominent Web3 gamers and content creators community. At their venue, attendees had the chance to experience several Web3 games firsthand. Star Atlas was featured prominently—as one of the event sponsors—on Monday. Looking at the footage shared on X, it looks like attendees had a great time!

Scanning Video Tutorial

Dominic (Community Manager) dropped a new video diving in SDU Scanning in SAGE. If you never attempted scanning before or wonder why you never find anything, this video is well worth a watch!

Play Video: SAGE Labs Beginner Tutorial - How to Scan

Sneak Peeks

Michael Oberschneider published a slew of concept art for a ship we had not seen before, the Calico Skiptrace! We copied some below, but you can find more—including intermediate stages—on his Art Station page.

Star Atlas – Calico Skiptrace [Concept Art – by Micheal Oberschneider]

GAN Guns

But that is not all. During the Atlas Brew, the team looked ahead and dropped some more sneak peeks for you all! Among the updated models for the Gatling gun and the Shotgun. A pass is being done on all GAN guns, and you should expect to see these in the April patch!

Star Atlas – New 3D model for GAN Gatling Gun

Star Atlas – New model for the GAN Shotgun

Paizul’s Arena / ONI CSS

Lastly, we have a short video of the outside (concept) of Paizul’s Arena on the ONI CSS and some related art. You can enjoy some gunplay in the white-boxed version of this arena today!

Play Video: Paizul's Arena Concept [WIP]

Star Atlas – Paizul’s Arena – Statue model in different orientations

Star Atlas – ONI CSS – Statue (of someone important…) on a pedestal

Star Atlas – ONI CSS – Trimming on the statue’s pedestal

You’ve reached the end of this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!