Welcome to our 179th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.
Another week, another wave of developments in the ever-evolving universe of Star Atlas. With new patches just around the corner for both the UE5 and SAGE modules, players can expect impactful changes to gameplay and economic balance. Meanwhile, DAO activity continues with two proposals entering the voting phase, and Michael (CEO) has shared some fresh glimpses of what’s to come!
Let’s dive into the highlights of this past week.
UE5 Patch coming
The next UE5 patch is going live this Wednesday, May 14th! This is another pre-season patch, following in the footsteps of the patch that went live this past March.
Below are some of the highlights of what to expect. Additional changes will be shared alongside the patch notes on May 14th. That same day, Dominic (Sr. Community Manager) will drop a video rundown!
The highlights:
- New Ships—The fully completed Pearce X5 model is in-game!
- New Gun (model)—Brand-new Shotgun (replacing the current temporary model)
- CO-OP Dogfighting—Fight the waves together!
- Dedicated servers—Local servers in low-latency locations provided by the team for gunplay game modes
- Paizul’s Arena—Major updates to this gunplay map
Dedicated servers is probably the absolute highlight of this release! These will bring a more stable FPS for folks who like to jump into multiplayer sessions! It basically unlocks fair competition between players and will make the whole experience smoother for those participating.
![Star Atlas [UE5] - The team is working on an art pass of the ONI CSS](https://assets.aephia.com/wp-assets/94751b062039d6d4d20397d98cfe07daaa16baab03050dd956524a5b0db3253b.jpg)
Star Atlas [UE5] – The team is performing an art pass on the ONI CSS
SAGE Patch coming
As more or less expected, the team is ready to roll out some of the economic changes that were discussed in the most recent Economic Forum. Below is the list the team shared:
Updates Coming This Week
Below is a breakdown of the updates for this week. The plan was for these changes to go live last week, but the team ran into some unexpected technical difficulties. The team is trying to overcome these and roll out this patch this week!
1. Food consumption for all actions will now scale with a ship’s VWAP.
Food consumption for in-game activities such as mining and scanning is currently proportional to the crew size, which makes sense immersively. However, it does not work well economically. For that reason, the team is tweaking the numbers to be proportional to the VWAP value of the ship(s). This means that Food consumption for bigger ships will drastically grow, while for Extra-Small ships, it should stay more or less where it is today.
2. Data Runner ships will now receive a 50% reduction in scan cooldown.
In an effort to make Data Runners more appealing, the team is implementing another benefit to scanning for these. The cooldown following a scan action will be reduced by 50%. If you have scanning fleets with data runners and other ships mixed, you may want to revisit those to benefit from this change.
3. We’re rebasing ATLAS crafting fees to be more in line with recent volatility.
The team has been rebasing ship prices in ATLAS, and now it’s the turn of crafting fees in-game.
4. The weekly FIC rotation and refill will now occur every two weeks instead of every week.
As mentioned last week, the team wants to lower the total ATLAS emissions by making FIC redemption less rewarding and more difficult. The first measure to this effect is that the team will now refill & rotate every two weeks, instead of every week. Once a Faction’s FIC 1 and FIC 2 offers run out, the team will still refill both.
Update Coming in 2-3 Weeks
The below update is planned to roll out in 2-3 weeks:
5. Faction Infrastructure Contracts #2 will redeem for 2 ATLAS as opposed to 2.2 ATLAS.
To combat the clear preference players have to craft FIC 2 over FIC 1, the team is going to make them less rewarding. This should also help push emissions a little lower.
Update Coming When Ready (Soon)
Lastly, a heavier lift for the team, but they hope to roll this one out soon:
6. Food upkeep will no longer be required at Starbases.
Maintaining Starbase food upkeep has mostly fallen on a few large players, from which other big players profited, but smaller players were very much dependent on them. So, the team is removing the requirement to make things smoother for everyone. Crafting will continue to run at 100% after this change has come into effect, while Food can still be donated at Starbases for Loyalty Points.
DAO Updates
Two new PIPs went live for voting this past week:
PIP 15: In-Person Community Platform — The proposal aims to strengthen the Star Atlas community by facilitating and promoting local connections and events. It will create a website-based platform for organizing Star Atlas community in-person meetups worldwide. The platform will handle event organization, ticketing, and host support, inspired by the Star Citizen community’s “Bar Citizen” initiative. Funding is requested to create the platform for a total of $9540 USD.
Results around time of publication: 32.6% For, 67.4% Against Closes: Thursday, May 22nd, end-of-day UTC
PIP-16: Ryden Systems — Risingson has been developing Eveeye for 1.5+ years while living off a savings account, providing gaming depth and real economic value to the Star Atlas community for free. While loving working on the tools, he cannot continue without a sustainable income and therefore will convert to a paid system. This funding request supports Eveeye in keeping running until a sustainable income can be generated, hopefully.
Results around time of publication: 91.4% For, 8.6% Against Closes: Thursday, May 22nd, end-of-day UTC
Sneak Peeks
Last week, we shared a mysterious image posted by Danny (CPO). This week, Michael felt compelled to outdo him by sharing a clearer shot using the same map editing tool (that Danny vibe-coded).
This is by far the most interesting image shared, as the two combined really give great insight into what the new, expanded galaxy map is actually going to look like when it goes live with/around the time C4 rolls out. It shows, among other things, the top left side of the map (ONI territory, with a sliver of Ustur territory to the right), with brand new regions consisting of multiple systems (colored polygons).
Star Atlas Golden Era – Sneak Peek: Map Expansion
That was not all Michael leaked, here are some additional images he posted on his X account:
Star Atlas – Calico Energy Rapidfire weapon [X-Small]
The backside of the weapon, to be precise. The calico Maxhog comes equipped with two of these in its weapon frunk.
Star Atlas – Concept Art for MUD outfits
Star Atlas – Mysterious Fimbul vehicle
This is an interesting one. It’s clearly branded as a Fimbul vehicle, most likely a ship. It looks to be around the same size class as a Lowbie, or perhaps it is one size class bigger. Such a ship does not show up in the GAO brochures, so it is unclear to us what exactly we’re looking at here.
Star Atlas – Profound Punaab model (head)
Star Atlas – Ground Vehicle Concept Art
An actual ground vehicle, which apparently can move autonomously or with a rider. No further details were supplied, so.. stay tuned for more!
That is it for this week! Thanks for reading!