Welcome to our 175th 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.

Last week, there was a juicy 2+ hour interview with Michael that’s well worth the watch. He dove into upcoming gameplay (SAGE and UE5), new mechanics like battle lines, changes to the map system, and much more. On the DAO side, the second Council term officially began this Friday, while the outgoing Council pushed three more PIPs through the pipeline on their way out.

Over in SAGE, the team significantly changed how FIC buy orders are refilled. Meanwhile, testing for the SAGE Free-to-Play version—now called Holosim Universe—has kicked off with community members. And that’s still not all the news from this past week!

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Interview with Michael

Virtuwul (community member) hosted a 2+ hour interview with Michael (CEO), which went deep into current and upcoming gameplay, both for SAGE and UE5. They also went into marketing, rentals, revenue, and other topics. Unlike most interviews that are relatively superficial and meant to bring Star Atlas to a new audience, here, Virtuwul and Michael really go deep while still trying to start at the base fundamentals so people relatively new to Star Atlas can follow along.

If you missed this, it is well worth the watch! That said, we extracted what alpha we could find and have summarized it below for your convenience!

Play Video: The Ultimate Michael Wagner Star Atlas Interview Part 2

Battle Lines

The team is working on a new concept to both enrich and constrain combat in C4: Battle lines. Personally, Michael considers this feature critical to the release of combat.

Battle lines serve as territorial boundaries, formed by linking a faction’s outermost Starbases. Enemy fleets cannot cross these lines unless they first destroy one of the two Starbases that power this link.

This system is designed to prevent players from freely roaming deep into enemy territory and wiping out fleets unchecked.

“I think it becomes quite chaotic if you can just navigate anywhere on the map.” — Michael

Instead, it encourages focused assaults—players must chip away at a faction’s outer starbases before they can push deeper and claim new territory.

Players can supply Toolkits to Starbases to reinforce these lines, strengthening the links between them. Of course, they can also send their fleets to help with the defenses.

The central area of the map will remain a free-for-all zone, at least initially, since it doesn’t fall under any faction’s control and is not protected by battle lines.

RIP Sectors

The sector-based map (101 x 101 square grid) will go away with C4 and the Galia map expansion! Instead, the game will use a global coordinate system (like most similar strategy games) for all entities within. This means stars, but also the individual planets within a star system.

This setup will also allow the team to spawn asteroids outside of star systems on the map, allowing players more interesting mining options. This makes sense, as planet-based mining will most likely take over the brunt of raw resource production with the introduction of claim-stakes in C4.

UE5

Beyond the monthly cadence of UE5 releases the team is aiming for, Michael shared there will be two more major Preseason releases before Season 0 will kick off. These will be focused on:

  1. First Preseason Release
  • Dedicated multiplayer support
  • First version of anti-cheat using Easy Anti-Cheat (through EOS)
  • Racing Gameplay
  • Ship Mastery (racing)
  • Weapon Mastery (gunplay)
  • Initial stage of character progression
  1. Second Preseason Release
  • Focus on Open World content
  • A new “transformative” gameplay mode with unique mechanics
  • Economic cross-over into SAGE (Harvest exotic resources needed in SAGE recipes)

Miscelaneous

  • There will be different variants of craftable ammo and fuel in the future.
  • Players will be able to craft Trading Decks on their Space Stations (after C4, as C4 does not launch with Space Station support), which allows them to create brand new local markets.
  • The team has multiple releasable ships but wants to pair those with bigger releases and (more importantly) player base growth.

Star Atlas - Pearce X5 [in-game model]

Star Atlas – Pearce X5 [in-game model]

DAO Update

Council Term 2 Started

The first Council term ended this past Friday, and the second term began! The following community members will be the DAO’s official Council members for the coming 9 months:

  • Bodhi
  • Drumcarl05
  • Emperor
  • Lanzer
  • Signal

The group started their tenure with a 2-hour meeting on the Star Atlas Discord (also live-streamed on Lanzer’s Twitch channel). Expect to hear more from them soon.

New PIPs

A new proposal opened up for voting earlier on Monday, another is going live on Tuesday, and a third is tentatively planned to go live later this week on Thursday! All three PIPs will remain open for voting for 2 weeks. Below, we’ll briefly go over them:

PIP-12: Iris’s Bounty: The Feast — This proposal introduces “Iris’s Bounty: The Feast,” a program designed to allow Star Atlas community members to apply for funding from the Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund to host small-scale social events. These events aim to strengthen the community and foster deeper connections among players. The program allocates $10,000 of Atlas from the Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund, with a maximum of $500 per request. Applicants will be required to provide event details, expected attendance, and estimated costs to receive funding, streamlining the process compared to drafting a full PIP.

PIP-13: Implementing Term Limits for Star Atlas DAO Council Members — This proposal establishes term limits for Star Atlas Council members to ensure fair turnover, prevent governance stagnation, and encourage fresh perspectives in DAO decision-making. It updates the existing election framework by introducing a two-term limit, after which a Council member must sit out at least one full term before running again. This is accomplished by replacing Section 4.4, “Term Limits,” of PIP-10 (Star Atlas: Council: Second Term & Beyond) with a new set of term limit rules outlined in Section 4.2. This proposal ensures that governance remains dynamic, decentralized, and resistant to entrenched influence, aligning with the DAO’s principles of transparency and equitable representation.

PIP-14: Deepening THEO Integration into the Star Atlas Economy — This proposal requests 10,000 USDC as a one-time development cost for a focused, fixed-term 6-week project aimed at enhancing Star Atlas’s economic ecosystem. In simple terms, we’re asking for 10,000 USDC for a 6-week effort to upgrade THEO with better economic tools, prepare it to connect with Star Atlas systems, make it smarter using DAO knowledge, delivering an improved web version immediately and a package for potential future in-game integration, with a commitment to repay the grant from initial fees.

Holosim Universe Testing

The SAGE Free-2-play version is steadily progressing, and the team has officially dubbed this game version the Holosim Universe.

This version comes with a few changes to the SAGE version that is currently live on mainnet:

  • Combat is already in, allowing the team to start the test-feedback-loop early on
  • Combat looting is in
  • There is a Faction-wide chat so players can chat with one another in-game
  • There is a tutorial-mission system that guides new players through the early game

Last week, the team put out a call for testers on Discord. Unfortunately, the application period has already closed, so if you’re not in, you’ll have to wait for the official release!

Star Atlas - Virtual Companion [Concept Art]

Star Atlas – Virtual Companion [Concept Art]

News Bits

Here are a few more bits of news:

  • A major change to the FIC buy order is being replenished by the team that went live this past week. Chris (VP of Economy) first shared that this would likely be coming during the last recent Economic Forum. From now on, only when both FICs have run out within a Faction will the team replenish both. Before, they replenished buy orders for an individual FIC when those had run out for just that FIC type within a Faction.
  • Jim Carter (Head of AI Systems) joined the Atlas Brew last week to talk about AI. Together with the Community team, they reviewed what part of AI he is working on now and the collaboration with SingularityNET. During the hour-long chat, he also shared the concept art for the virtual companion each player will have in-game (see image above).
  • Shaga is launching a Star Atlas-backed PlayOnShaga campaign where participants can earn over $100k in rewards! Their thread on X describes how to participate, but the core idea is to share clips of Shaga in action on X. The campaign runs until April 30th!

Shaga x Star Atlas - Creator Campaign

Shaga x Star Atlas – Creator Campaign

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