Welcome to our 185th 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.
It was a relatively calm week in Star Atlas, but not without notable updates. The latest Atlas Brew featured part two of the C4 Q&A with Brett (VP of Engineering), revealing new details about Crafting Habs, Claim Stakes, and combat mechanics. Meanwhile, FIC 3 and 4 recipes went live in SAGE, the team dropped new sneak peeks, and the next Community Week was teased, including the return of the Joni Awards and a DAC vs. Team showdown in UE5!
Let’s dive in.
Atlas Brew – C4 Revelations
This past week, the community team invited Brett (VP of Engineering) back on the Atlas Brew for part 2 of the C4 Q&A with the community.
Below, we list the new reveals that were shared during the event:
Crafting Habs
- The Land Plots that people own at this time actually only represent the land. The team is considering airdropping the Hab(itat) that came with it, which will allow people to use that Hab on Starbases for now.
- You will only be able to deploy a Hab on a Starbase using these Hab assets. There is not going to be another way of constructing a Hab at the Starbase.
Claim Stakes
- Claim stakes are usable on every type of planet. The planet type will assign it a tag, and this will limit the buildings that can be built within the claim stake.
- There will not be any form of rental of Claim stakes, claimed land, or buildings constructed there.
- The mining drill, power plant, and other building assets (including upgrades) will need to be converted by the player into the individual materials that make them up. This will be done through a crafting recipe in SAGE. Claim Stakes won’t be able to deal with these tokens directly.
- You can deconstruct buildings that you built in claim stakes, but you will not recover 100% of the materials. A small percentage is burned.
- Ships will get a new metric: loading and unloading rates. This will play a role when supplying them with cargo or when taking it out, such as when landing at a claim stake with/for freight.
- Deployment: A claim stake is cargo. You can move it to a Starbase and from there deploy it on a planet through the Starbase menu.
- Planets do not have individual locations on the map; the planets and their Claim stakes are all accessed through the Starbase, much like how mining works today.
- The rent for a deployed Claim Stake varies by planet.
- Beyond the ongoing fee, a placement fee will also be charged, based on the Starbase and Claim Stake tier.
Movement
- You can be attacked while sub-warping, but not when warping or using a Warp Lane.
- Traveling via Warp Lanes costs Atlas; no Fuel is consumed.
Combat
- Combat will be 1-vs-1 and will take place instantaneously when a player selects a fleet to attack another fleet. There is no way to combine fleets to attack together.
- Bomber ships will likely have buffs (possibly vs Starbases and/or larger ships).
- In ship-2-ship combat, LP is awarded to the player (finally) destroying the other fleet. For Starbases, the team is currently exploring alternative options.
- When a player destroys another fleet, the cargo is dropped on that spot on the map, and an exclusivity period starts where only that final attacker, using any of their fleets, will be able to pick up the loot.
- After the exclusivity window expires, any remaining loot is now open to all.
- Picking up loot will cost you all your action points (it is “reloading”), meaning it can not defend itself when attacked at that moment.
- Repair fleets can repair other fleets while they are in combat.
- When repairing another fleet with a repair fleet, the repair fleet will also reload, meaning it will be unable to defend itself.
PTR
- You will likely be able to select which ships you want to play with, allowing you to test various options. The team may issue directives, allowing them to test specific aspects.
- The team will experiment with several values during the PTR to finalize them. Among them: travel speed & loot dropped after a fleet was destroyed
News Bits
Here are some small news bits from the past week:
- During the Atlas Brew, Santi announced the announcement of the upcoming Community Week, which will include the 3rd edition of the Joni & COPA awards. In addition, they are also planning a DAC vs Team UE5 Gunplay competition, where teams will receive prizes for managing to beat the Team.
- The new FIC 3 & 4 recipes, along with other FIC-related changes we reported on last week, are now live in Starbase.
- José (Lead Lore Noot) hosted another Lore Keepers event, where he went over Holosim and C4. Unlike last time, there were no major gameplay-related reveals, but he did share some ideas for C4 and that both Holosim and Sage are important “beings” (yes, you read that right) in the game’s lore.
- A little over a week ago, the DAO published a form that people can use to request financial aid for organizing a Star Atlas-related community meetup.
- The StarPath referral program is ending today (June 23rd, the date of publication of this issue). This also means that there will be no more Starpath-related discounts available for the team’s offering on the Galactic Marketplace.
Sneak Peeks
The team shared some beauty shots during the past week of the Calico Scud and a new skin. The team also finished work on their Gatling Gun, and Dom shared a few shots of the upcoming redesign of the Sniper rifle as well. We have included all of these below!
Star Atlas – Calico Scud
Star Atlas – New Gatling Gun (finalized)
Star Atlas – New Sniper Rifle
You’ve reached the end of this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!