Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #181

Welcome to our 181st 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.

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The team has released a follow-up patch for the May UE5 update, addressing gameplay balance and technical issues, along with some small quality-of-life improvements. Meanwhile, the Lore Keepers meeting shed new light on how the game world will expand with the upcoming C4 release, making it essential material even for those not particularly interested in lore. To round things off, we have a few minor news items and some exciting concept art sneak peeks!

Let’s dive right in!

UE5 Patch – Part 2

The May patch is live, but as we reported last week, there were a few lingering issues. The team rolled out a new patch last week to fix these and tweak some other aspects while at it. We have included the full patch notes below:

Balance

• Scout Rifle Damage increased from 37 → 40
• Scout Rifle Mag size increased from 10 → 15
• Shotgun Damage decreased from 18 → 16
• Shotgun Range decreased from 0.6 → 0.5
• Increased shotgun pickup timer from 30s → 60s
• Energy Rifle Fire Rate increased from 5 → 6
• Energy Rifle Mag Size increased from 18 → 21
• Gatling Gun Mag Size decreased from 140 → 120
• Gatling Gun Accuracy regen decreased from 40 → 30
• Implemented linear damage falloff on grenades, beginning at 3.5m (50% of the 7m total blast radius)
• Standardized Shield Points to be 100 across all species (previously varied between 50, 100, and 150 depending on the species you were using)
• Decreased all large species HP by 25 (Tufa, Photoli, and Large Usturs)
• Increased health and shield pickup timers from 15s → 60s
• Increased bullet size from 7 → 9 for improved hit detection

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a player may crash when loading/exiting certain game modes
• Fixed an issue preventing users from seeing their owned ships or crew
• Restored Floydliner as the default Main Menu Ship
• Adjusted Jettie Boost self-inflicted damage to no longer be fatal, similar to fall damage
• Fixed an issue where a character’s ragdoll death would implode
• Fixed multiple issues affecting gameplay under degraded network conditions, including ragdoll, camera jitter, jetty VFX/SFX, and automatic weapon fire SFX
• Fixed an issue where a Shotgun pickup would sometimes grant a broken “Incendiary Pistol” weapon
• Fixed an issue in Coop Dogfight where the game host would lose the ability to interact after respawn
• Fixed an issue where late joiners would see an incorrect wave count in Coop Dogfight
• Fixed some small collision issues in Arena maps
• Fixed an issue where enemies would have an incorrect minimap market color when joining a match in progress
• Fixed an issue where players couldn’t join a private lobby

Polish

• Adjusted the way gravity is applied to minable rock fragments on planetary surfaces
• Added new Voice Over events for your team or the enemy team owning all zones in the Zones game mode
• Adjusted weapon rounds indicator to turn red when low on ammo
• Added an indicator in the lobby for when dedicated server requirements are met
• Adjusted dedicated servers to remain running even when the lobby host exits the match
• Updated Fimbul Airbike, Fimbul Lowbie, and Fimbul ECOS Unibomba thruster VFX
• Added Pearce X5 weapon recoil animations

Highlights

Beyond fixing the crashes, one other thing that got fixed is the private games (lobbies). Previously, it was unable to join a private game, making them all but useless. With this fix, players can now host games exclusively with their friends.

Another big thing—not in the patch notes, so that may have gone unnoticed—is that now you can use your Crew Card model in the multiplayer matches! And, of course, others will also be able to see you, sporting your favorite Crew Card!

Lore Keepers – C4

If you love game-related lore, then the monthly Lore Keepers meetings hosted by José (Chief Noot & Lore Writer) are probably already marked on your calendar. However, even if you’re not that into lore, last week’s event is definitely a must-listen!

The first half of the meeting was an exposé on how we reached the current point in time (the year 2625). It covered the discovery of Iris, the Convergence War, the Peace Treaty, and everything that followed up to today—100 years after the Peace Treaty.

The second half then explored how this situation leads up to the events that take place after C4 goes live. It offered quite a few hints about gameplay and the massive increase in scope: more gameplay, star systems, resources, and recipes.

To start, the factions continue working to keep conflicts from escalating to a full-scale war. The Council of Peace holds the ultimate authority across the three major factions, preventing them from directly engaging each other even as they expand their territories. However, what private companies/initiatives (the players) do is a different story.

This second part of the meeting contained crucial information for everyone interested in playing SAGE after the upcoming C4 release (there’s no official ETA yet). While much of the information was hidden inside the lore reveals, below we share some of the more direct highlights.

Planets

There will be eight different types of planets, each requiring different infrastructure to colonize (use your claim stake). Beyond infrastructure differences, each planet type has its own set of resources that can be mined there. For example, basalt can only be found on Terrestrial planets, and extracting it requires the appropriate extractor (infra & Tier).

planet ice giants

asteroid belt

planet barren

planet volcanic

planet terrestial

planet gas giant

AI-generated “concept art” for some of the planet types

A single planet might have many different resources, but unlocking them depends on having the right upgrades. However, the maximum level of infrastructure you can build by yourself depends on both your Council Rank and (it would seem) the Tier of the Starbase in that system.

The eight planet types are:

• Barren
• Terrestrial
• Gas Giants
• Ice Giants
• Volcanic
• Asteroid Belts
• Dark Planets
• Oceanic

Expansion

José also shared that he’s tasked with writing lore-related texts for 5,104 different in-game elements, covering planet types, resources, recipes, and tiers.

Lastly, looking at the map, the Galia Expanse will grow from 51 star systems to well over 1,000 (as previously hinted in some official leaks).

News Bits

Here are a few smaller news bits shared during the past week:

• With the latest SAGE update, it seems a misconfiguration went live, which causes the minimum Starbase Tier needed for crafting certain items to be 1 Tier higher. Recipes requiring a Tier 2 Starbase previously now require a Tier 3 Starbase. The team is working on a fix.
• It looks like dedicated servers drop all connections after 1 hour. It’s not clear if this is still the case, but the team is looking to change that configuration setting.

Sneak Peeks

Both Gary Sanchez (Lead Art Director – Vehicles) and Sören Meding (Concept Artist) posted new artwork to their ArtStation pages, some of which we included below!

First off, Gary posted some of his concept sketches for the Busan ships:

Star Atlas – Busan – Concept sketch explorations [by Gary Sanchez] (source)

Next up, Sören posted a lot of older concepting for landing pads in various compositions and placements. Though we are well past most of these, as you can already find landing pads in-game (UE5), we have picked a few that stood out to us the most. You can find many more on his profile!

Star Atlas – Landing pad Concept art [by Sören Meding] (source)

Star Atlas – Landing pad Concept art [by Sören Meding] (source)

Star Atlas – Landing pad Concept art [by Sören Meding] (source)

If you were here early enough to remember the team’s plans for requiring players to work together to craft the first warpgate at the MUD CSS, then here is some concept art for what that could have looked like:

Star Atlas – Landing pad Concept art [by Sören Meding] (source)

_That is it for this week. Thank you for reading!