Welcome to our 219th 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.

This week is all about steady progress rather than big headlines. Holosim Chapter 2 still hasn’t launched, but it’s clearly getting close, with core systems like the new Combat UI and zProfile integration falling into place. Meanwhile, UE5 development continues to expand the Galia experience, z.ink ticks off a key milestone, and DAO voting is heading toward its conclusion.

Let’s dive in!

Holosim – Season 1 Chapter 2

The second chapter of Holosim has not yet gone live, but it looks like this could change any day now.

This past week, we received only a few small updates, but good vibes emanated from both the team and community testers. The team shared a first glimpse of the new Combat UI that will go live with Chapter 2, touting “significantly enhanced combat systems and combat tracking”.

Star Atlas - Holosim S1C2 - Combat Interface

Star Atlas – Holosim S1C2 – Combat Interface

Star Atlas - Holosim S1C2 - Combat Interface

Star Atlas – Holosim S1C2 – Combat Interface

Meanwhile, Jim has been working on hooking zProfile up to Holosim during the past week. Specifically, he has been working on hooking up the z.ink Subscriptions to the Holosim battlepass system and ensuring Holosim achievements reward zXP.

It looks like both systems are now working, or at least they will be by the time the new chapter goes live.

Galia Game Mode

Work continues on the Galia single-player mode, and Danny (CPO) shared that the focus of UE5 development has shifted to the open-world model.

The team added planetary navigation for AI, which is not super straightforward, as UE5 by default assumes the Z-axis determines what is up and down. The team had to put in some work to get planetary (more-or-less spherical) AI navigation working, where the planet’s center determines the gravity. Brad (Gameplay Engineer) showed this off during the Brew with a gunplay match on a base that was stuck to the side of a small planetoid. There were still some glitches, such as dead bodies floating into space, but it was already working pretty well.

In the latest patch (see below), a new mining hotspot was added, where peaceful (NPC) miners are regularly harassed by Jorvik pirates. You can earn some bounties here, as a side quest. These encounters will repeat indefinitely, meaning you can return often to help beat the pirates. Beyond a small testbed for NPC intelligence, these sorts of additions make the galaxy come alive.

At the moment, the pirates are only attacking the NPC miners. Brad is, however, working on them, taking an interest in visiting players as well. This would work in roughly the same way, where they would scan the fleet and its contents, determine the risk/reward ratio, and act based on that.

Another thing that will help make the Galia Expanse feel more alive is the upcoming addition of monsters and animals to planets. These may attack the player, and the player will, of course, be able to hunt them

Zink Updates

Last week, we reported that a few stability updates and improvements had gone live for the zProfile. But unfortunately, the team had to roll the new SAGE zXP mechanic back, due to unforeseen issues. With Holosim becoming Jim’s top priority, he had no time to look into it to see if he could solve those issues.

This means that SAGE zXP is again distributed in near-realtime, and useless fleet movements are not filtered out. Once Holosim Chapter 2 is live, Jim will likely have time to figure this out once and for all.

On the positive side, Jim shared that the Solana-to-z.ink bridge has now been fully implemented. There is still a little bit of work to be done before it can go to the auditors. Nonetheless, this marks a big milestone, as it is one of the top-priority items that need to be completed (and audited) before z.ink mainnet can be officially launched.

Lastly, the team updated the z.ink testnet to the latest Solana/Agave validator client software.

Star Atlas - DAO

Star Atlas – DAO

DAO Updates

Two PIPs (POLIS Improvement Proposals) are still open for voting until the end of the week. Here are the details and the current voting status:

PIP-27: DAO Casters Election: Term 1

Per the requirements of PIP-20: Establishment of the DAO Casters Program — Elected Content Creators for Star Atlas Ecosystem Promotion, this is the election PIP for a structured program of 5 elected content creators dedicated to promoting the entire Star Atlas ecosystem.

Structure:

  • Structure: Single Transferable Vote (STV)
  • Author: Star Atlas DAO Council (SAC-3)
  • Voting Opened: Saturday, February 21st
  • Voting Closes: Friday, March 6th (end-of-day UTC)

Preliminary results (~9.5 days in, ~91M PVP committed):

  1. Funcracker
  2. Neo
  3. Winston
  4. Alices Arcade
  5. Odvb

DAO Casters #1 - Intermediate voting results [by Aephia's STV visualizer]

DAO Casters #1 – Intermediate voting results [by Aephia’s STV visualizer]

Note: The Council shared that Chet Roberts has withdrawn from the initiative. Please do not vote for him anymore.

Note 2: The end date of the first DAO Caster term mentioned in the (copied) summary above is wrong. April 1st is the start date, which means the end date is 90 days later, on June 30th, 2026.

PIP-28: Temporary DAO Funding to Preserve Core Lore, Design, and Community Functions

In an effort to boost our runway and ensure Star Atlas can fulfill the roadmap and deliver the releases planned for this year, ATMTA (the leading developer of Star Atlas) was forced to make painful cuts to its talent. Unfortunately, my position as a lore writer and community team member was terminated as part of this process. Despite this, I remain confident in Star Atlas and in the incredible game modes that still have the potential to turn this situation around, such as Holosim, C4, Z.ink, and Siege Mode. This PIP exists because I want to continue fighting alongside this community and contributing to Star Atlas during this critical period.

Structure:

  • Requested funding: 30,000 USD (6 x 5,000 USD)
  • Structure: 1-off PIP
  • Author: ZeSKK
  • Voting Opened: Saturday, February 21st
  • Voting Closes: Friday, March 6th (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~9.5 days in, ~131M PVP committed):

  • For: 93.5%
  • Against: 4.9%
  • Abstain: 1.6%

This is a special PIP, as it does not rely on the Ecosystem Fund but instead on the outside treasury, particularly the USD portion. This requires Michael’s approval, and he has been clear from the first moment that José has this.

UE5 Patch

A new UE5 patch was released this past week, bringing mostly fixes. Below are the full patch notes.

February 26 – Star Atlas UE Patch Notes [LIVE]

Galia:

  • Locations tab in the ship menu redone to show system hierarchy
  • Added a new Mining Hot Spot to the Hecteria system
  • Defend the ARM Taps from pirates while racking up bounties

Gunplay:

  • Fixed issue where Sliding with toggle crouch on would get out of sync
  • Fixed Zones minimap markers not changing color on zone capture
  • Fixed Pause menu showing photo mode available during times it’s disabled

Matchmaking and Main Menu:

  • Added new configurable host settings for Races and Gunplay
  • Fixed issue preventing the correct loading screen art from showing when joining Ranked matches
  • Fixed issue where “O” Session info wasnt displayed correctly in Ranked matches
  • Fixed issue where hosting a race wasn’t passing in the correct match parameters
  • Fixed issue where late joiners would see “Jorvik” as player names in post match celebration sequence
  • Fixed several issues surrounding joining by ID and inviting friends to Lobbies

Racing:

  • Increased Spectator Speed in races
  • Fixed grayed-out input tool tips in Spectator HUD

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Super Phoenix Sports – Star Shooter – March 1st

News Bits

Here are a few last news snippets for you to wrap up this week’s issue:

  • The team has spent one full week on internal testing of SAGE C4. They are doing one more (concluding) this week, after which they are going to evaluate their options and discuss a PTR go-live target date. Note that this date may not be shared with the public.
  • Super Phoenix Sports organized a small gunplay match this past Sunday, where a small number of teams competed for the big prize. In a thrilling finale, Quimera narrowly defeated team Vanguard. Next week, the (4-week) Racing tournament will start with the season opener. Make sure to tune in!

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading!