# Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #249 Published September 28, 2026 by Funcracker. _Welcome to our 249th 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._ --- Last week, the team put real numbers on the planned Council Rank progression for mainnet. The first levels should come quickly, while reaching the top could take anywhere from six months to well over a year, depending on how actively you play. Beyond C4, on a more somber note, Chris, VP of Game Economy, resigned from ATMTA after several years of shaping the game’s economy. Finally, PIP-36 saw a major swing in support as voting enters its final days. _Let’s dive in!_ ## SAGE C4 ### Council Rank Improvements Michael (CEO) and John (Product Manager) shared the first concrete mainnet pacing targets for **Council Rank** during last week’s [Atlas Brew #223](https://youtu.be/pjnpIm98EMg?t=1831). These remain design targets under active tuning. A player who reaches the rolling XP soft cap every day would take about **six months** to reach the maximum level under the current configuration. Averaged across player portfolios, the team expects the climb to take roughly **one year**. The curve itself will become much steeper: early levels should require substantially less XP, while later levels become progressively harder. Existing SAGE: Starbased XP will still carry over at mainnet. Michael estimated that a long-term player could begin with progress equivalent to roughly **three months** of leveling, which makes the opening experience for new players especially important. The current target is for players to earn their first levels across all licenses within a few hours and reach roughly **levels 3 to 5 within seven to ten days**. Basic access to every gameplay loop should be available from the start. Players should not have to grind through an unrelated career before reaching the activity they came to play. Some complex crafting recipes are therefore being reclassified as standard recipes, while others will receive lower access requirements. Some rarer crafting inputs may still require a trip into the Medium Risk Zone. We [covered the wider progression plan in newsletter #245](https://aephia.com/star-atlas/weekly-star-atlas-newsletter-245/), when the team confirmed the Starbased XP carryover and put the planned research-point price at 350 ATLAS. The Council Rank interface is being updated alongside the balance work so players can see dead ends and unfinished paths before spending research points. Selecting a node should show its prerequisites, the path leading into and beyond it, its point cost, research time, and stated benefit. Planned branches such as freight, repair, and salvage can appear during PTR development with clear unfinished markers, but unfinished branches will be hidden from the mainnet interface. One completed node in the development build granted **seven ship-capacity points**, though that value was shown as an example rather than final balance. ### Scanning and Combat Rewards The intended mainnet scanning design replaces toolkits with **dedicated scanning charges**. Three charge recipes will each unlock two of the six scanning patterns. Easier, cheaper charges should return basic resources and other lower-quality loot, while harder recipes open better loot tables. The intended combat-reward model splits PvE and PvP rewards: * **PvE:** Kills should award Loyalty Points toward a proportional share of fixed daily ATLAS emissions, plus randomized loot from enemy fleets and Starbases. * **PvP:** Defeated fleets should award medallions based on their scale and class, along with loot derived from the fleet’s actual configuration and everything already held in its cargo. The one-medallion-to-one-ATLAS redemption rate and the need to extract medallions through a Starbase were already covered in [newsletter #246](https://aephia.com/star-atlas/weekly-star-atlas-newsletter-246/). The new detail is that PvP loot should reflect what the defeated fleet was carrying and how it was fitted, rather than come entirely from a random table. ### Claim Stake Onboarding The team has also decided that a **Tier 1 Claim Stake** should be usable from day one. The starter path is intended to be available from the Central Space Station with fewer deployment steps. The full logistics, fee, and remote-placement loop remains part of later progression. This follows the Claim Stake onboarding overhaul we [covered last week](https://aephia.com/star-atlas/weekly-star-atlas-newsletter-248/). ## Chris Leaves Michael confirmed last week that **Chris has resigned from the company**. Chris had continued working with the team over the preceding months, including on economic reporting and product economy design. Michael linked the departure to the reduced salaries the team has accepted: > Chris has been working with us over the last few months. Sadly, however, he did resign as of last week. The team has been making significant sacrifices and working at heavily reduced salaries now for a year and a half. So, it’s tough to preserve what we have when other opportunities exist out there. Chris had been responsible for areas including Open Market Operations, the Economic Forum, quarterly economy reports, and the Econ Vantarah group. Michael shared that Chris left the team in a good spot regarding the C4 economy and that he had worked very closely with Chris on all economic decisions made so far. _We want to thank Chris for all the work he has done, and the passion and smarts he brought to the project!_ ## DAO Updates Support for PIP-36 swung sharply last week. It had only **14.1% For** when we published [newsletter #248](https://aephia.com/star-atlas/weekly-star-atlas-newsletter-248/), but now is closer to approval with **45.9% For**. Voting remains open through October 2nd. ### PIP-36: [Star Atlas DAO Dashboard](https://govern.staratlas.com/proposals/c00de055-1942-486f-a64d-dd4ee360500f) > This proposal authorizes the creation of a public Star Atlas DAO Dashboard and a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process to select a DEVELOPER to build the Dashboard. The Dashboard will consolidate important DAO financial, governance, PIP, and Council information into a single publicly accessible resource. The maximum amount authorized under this PIP is 13,992,734 ATLAS (the current 5% Ecosystem Fund limit). Following approval, the DAO Council will publish an RFP listing Dashboard requirements and the process for selecting a DEVELOPER. Structure: * **Requested funding:** 13,992,734 ATLAS * **Structure**: 1-off PIP * **Voting Opened**: Friday, September 18th * **Voting Closes**: Friday, October 2nd (end-of-day UTC) Results as of September 26th: * **Votes**: \~70M PVP committed * **For**: 45.9% * **Against**: 54% * **Abstain**: 0.1% _That is it for this week! Thanks for reading, and until the next!_