In this episode, we recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Star OST Week in Review podcast. This is podcast number 107. Any articles or videos I mentioned can be found on my website at intergalacticherald. com. Just look for Newsrag. News recap number 155. So just a quick summary of things to be talking about today.
[00:00:18] The Star Atlas team had two events, they had the Atlas Brew, and the Economic Forum, and during the Atlas Brew, the big new release of Fleet Rentals occurred. So I’ll touch briefly on that, and then I’ll end with my thoughts on kind of the state of Star Atlas, and my journey playing Star Atlas. But before I get to that, I just want to mention a few things that I’m doing within the Star Atlas ecosystem.
[00:00:39] The first is I have a Star Atlas DAO PIP, which is a proposal for a new Star Atlas experience, I guess. I’m looking to create an in person community meetup platform. So I have that Proposal up there. It’s being reviewed by the DAO Council But still definitely open any feedback or thoughts on that to help refine that.
[00:00:59] You can check that out in the Star Atlas Discord Go to the DAO section channels there and then look for PIP drafts And you’ll find my name and in person community meetup platform Additionally, I do have a Star Allies merch store, a very small merch store, but you know, gotta start somewhere. It’s at intergalacticgear.
[00:01:18] com called Intergalactic Gear. It’s open for business, has some Star Allies mugs, trying to work on some wall art, and I also have a merch survey there so it can help me determine some future products to put up there. So please do check out intergalacticgear. com. And then I also am trying to get together or create a kind of starless gamer community for starless gamers that aren’t members of guilds and maybe want a different experience than the discord chat platform so i’m looking to create a more threaded discussion forum with email alerts so you can kind of Just follow things you’re interested in and not have to check back unless there’s something new if you go to intergalacticcoalition.
[00:01:56] com com. There’s an interest survey there just looking to get a kind of core group to get started. It will be a paid community, but this is to offset the cost of the software unlike Discord, it’s not free. So there’ll be a fee to help offset that cost to get that software up and running. So again, that’s intergalacticcoalition.
[00:02:14] com. So let’s go ahead and get into the bulk of the content that came out. Again, like I said Star Atlas had two events. The Atlas Brew and the Economic Forum. Talk quickly about the Atlas Brew. But mainly it was kind of a what they call a freestyle. Format and I think that was kind of tongue in cheek because they decided to launch the fleet rentals during the Atlas brew and they kind of We’re doing some live Commentary on fleets that showed up and if they got rented right away and things like that So definitely is kind of cool getting that kind of live launch there So if you’re wanting to check that out, you can go to YouTube and look for Star Atlas TV They record the most the Star Atlas live Or I should, yeah, community events or whatever, so you can check that out there.
[00:03:03] So, and I’ll talk more about Fleet Randalls in a second. Because that’s pretty much all there was. Well, I’m sure there was, what did they call it, Noteworthy News and some other. Updates. I don’t know. I just remember the fleet rental thing. That was on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, the economic team does their monthly economic forum.
[00:03:21] And if you’ve been listening to my podcast before, you’ll know I just always never seem to Connect in with it, but I’ve come to conclusion, two conclusions. One, don’t listen to it at 10 o’clock at 2xp on a Friday night. That’s just too much. But what I’ve really decided that I need to do, and I think it’s just well it’s partly because it’s late in the evening, but it’s also because of the topic.
[00:03:42] But they are getting, now that I kind of see how it’s going, they are doing updates, they are not even going to say teasing things, but I think they’re just sort of rolling out things and ideas and concepts, and they’re just. So I think I’m just going to always decide I’m going to listen to it twice once just to kind of get you know, what’s going on.
[00:04:00] Plus I usually record this podcast before I have time to do a second listen and then listen sometime on the weekend when it’s a little more easy to concentrate. Cause again, I do think there’s a lot of good information and it’s just, yeah, it’s, again, a combination of too deep and too tired, so.
[00:04:16] But, one thing I do kind of remember that I perked up was, again, this talk of the kind of free to play version of Star Atlas. So Again, I need to re listen I have some general thoughts about it I’ll touch in a second, but basically what they mentioned again what they mentioned was it’ll be a great onboarding mechanism again, it’s still in development, so I, I always don’t like talking about, well, it’s going to do this, because, again, until it’s released we don’t know, but the one little point on the slide that really stood out and kind of made me kind of wake up, I guess, was that it will make, quote, Sage fun, which I’m like, yeah, no, that’s true.
[00:04:51] I’m not really having fun in Sage. I mean, I’m doing it. And if you’ve been following all my podcasts, you know, I’m kind of slowly working toward a goal, which got completely, um, harder by changing the formula for the Mombax, but just the fact they had to put down this slide was, I just made me laugh.
[00:05:07] So anyways, just wanted to pass that along that yeah. So again, I’ll probably learn a little more, but again, if you’re interested in listening to it at your rate, at your time please do check out Stardust TV they have a link to the economic report, or you can check my newsletter at intergalacticherald.
[00:05:20] com, newscap number 155, and I have links. directly to those two videos. So let’s go ahead and get into kind of my thoughts on the state of Star Atlas. Again, the big one was the fleet rentals. I haven’t listened to yet, but I know Beyond the Horizon just put out a his started a new series on that.
[00:05:35] Don McVane, one of the community team, he did kind of some short videos on how to make a fleet and put it up for rentals and how to loan it out. Actually, it’s the same thing. How to rent it and how to loan it. And again, it was just released Definitely a good rollout, in the sense that we got a lot of information, but they did kind of caution that it’s you know, a minimum viable product, so and I did see some things in Discord, people were already having problems with was it moving it?
[00:06:00] I can’t remember. And then whether or not all the automation tools out, which I think they did almost kind of at the same time. So but again, just kind of thinking about it in a total, not actual gameplay, not actually how it works, but kind of just the concept of it. What really kind of struck me as they were talking on the Alice brew about, well, how much do you run it for?
[00:06:20] And again, I. I think the cost is a daily rental, I think that’s the minimum, but of course you can rent it for a longer period, which means you’d sort of just reserve it, but you’re still paying on a daily basis. So the, the renter, let me see, let me back up. So the renter, rentee. Owner. Yeah, let’s do renter and owner.
[00:06:41] Yeah, yeah, that’s easier to say. I’m thinking of a house. You have a house owner and a house renter. Yeah, yeah. So, the renter, okay, so the owner of a fleet puts up a number. So, they’re gonna get that money. Guaranteed per day, I think. I think you can’t cancel early. Well, you lose something, but you’re still going to get something.
[00:07:01] You’re not going to come back with zero as the owner of the fleet. You’re going to get something out of it. But the renter, on the other hand, is taking, I guess, the most risk. In the sense that they have to make their return on investment for their costs. So, let’s just say it’s a thousand atlas a day. You need to be able to make a thousand atlas in a day or it just doesn’t pencil out.
[00:07:19] Now, I, I did I did think, well, maybe you have a different purpose. So again, I was thinking to myself, well, my purpose is to get a mob X and maybe I want to rent a fleet to help me transport my materials. So I might be willing to pay for speed, meaning get a bigger fleet, move it faster. Or I was thinking I might be able to, I might be willing to rent it because the cost to my small fleet to move it is still a cost.
[00:07:48] So yeah, you need to think about your return on investment, but also I guess just, I mean, for the purpose of that and, and where I guess I’m going with that is that. It doesn’t have to be just if you rent it for a thousand, can you make a thousand in one day? That’s definitely a calculation. So so I think there’s a lot to it.
[00:08:07] And like they were kind of mentioned on the Atlas Brew, the market and the economy, supply and demand, all that, that’ll kind of, marketplace, I guess is the best way to say it, will equilibrium to a price. And that makes perfect sense. Supply and demand, classic Econ 101. I’m not an econ person so that’s not going to come up in my thing yet.
[00:08:30] But I realize regardless of all those things, this does add another element to the game. So we’ve got freight rentals on top of local markets, on top of mining and crafting. And transport on top of LP. I’m trying to think if I got all the little things. Oh infrastructure contracts. And I guess even faction fleet, because that’s still something.
[00:08:55] And claim stakes. So, definitely this adds another element to the game. So in that sense Awesome, you know, but here’s some caveats. I was thinking of two. One, are there enough fleets? Which after I wrote this down, I just realized that’s okay because that’s just a supply and demand thing. If there’s low supply, again, my very, very, very rudimentary understanding of economic theory, is that there’s not a lot of fleets, hence there’s a lot not a lot of supply, but there is a lot of demand that will cause the price to go up.
[00:09:27] So good for the owners potentially okay for the renters, but again, it assumes they can actually make a profit because, or return on investment, because if they can’t, then they won’t rent. So, then the price will have to come down. So, yeah, supply is important, but so is demand. So, anyways, we’ll just see how that goes.
[00:09:50] And, again, it’s still a great thing in there. And then the final thought I had on fleet rentals was there had been talk, and somebody even asked the Atlas Brew, will this turn off faction fleet? And they said, well, we’re going to watch and see. And one thing I realized just based on the time, we’re at in the development of Star Atlas.
[00:10:07] There’s all this talk, well there’s people in Faction Fleet. Okay, there’s other aspects. There’s people who have ships that aren’t in Faction Fleet. I think I’ve even seen occasionally in the Discord, in the general, that people have ships in the old version of Sage. Sage I don’t even remember what it was, but before we got to Starbase.
[00:10:26] So there’s ships there too. And of course there’s on purchase ships. How do any of those people Okay, so I guess let’s step back. If you’re in Faction Fleet and you’re refilling your stuff, you’re aware. At least you’re doing that. Maybe you aren’t checking Discord. If you’re not refilling, you’re not aware.
[00:10:45] If you own ships and you’re Not aware. And if you have ships in the old version of Sage, you’re unaware. Anyways, the point being is it seems to me at least there’s a lot of potential unaware that have assets, i. e. they own ships, but they don’t even know fleet rentals exist. And I wondered, is that, it seems like a problem.
[00:11:08] And how do you reach them? So again, you can, but are they? And by they, I guess, Star Atlas. So, may not be their goal to reach them, but partly the thought that Faction Fleet, or excuse me Fleet Rental was to get people off the sideline into a new passive stream. But again, they would have to know that.
[00:11:29] So, and again, may not be their point right away, but if those people don’t know about it, then forest, tree, falling thing, then it doesn’t matter to them. So, Hopefully they’re going to release more information, maybe something, or maybe that’s just not the, the marketing pitch right now, and that’s fine too.
[00:11:50] So but anyways, it just got me thinking, there’s potentially people that don’t even know fleet rentals exist, and they own ships, so. Next thing free to play. Again, I do need to re listen to the econ form, but, it, it is, What I, what I did remember listening to last night was it is a very interesting thing that you, I think they said you don’t need to know anything about crypto and you don’t need to buy ships because it sounds like what they were describing is the onboard experiences you would start and then all this stuff would be handled behind the scenes because it’s not, it’s, it’s it’s not on the main production, I don’t know what the right term, main net, I don’t, I don’t, anyways, it’s, it’s, it’s, It’s parallel, it’s a, it’s a test environment, and again, maybe this is that Apollo structure.
[00:12:44] I’m not sure, but anyways, they were saying, well, again, we’ll create, while it’s behind the scenes, we’ll give them some ships and some resources and a tutorial about what to do next. So That is very interesting because again there, again, if you go to my website, you’ll see my guides. There’s a lot, I mean, just simply starting from zero, meaning I want to play, well, I’ve got to take my real money and somehow turn it into crypto and then move that crypto into Starless and then buy ships and buy resources and whatever else you do.
[00:13:13] And again, I have tutorials that walk you through that. There’s a lot of steps. So, it is very interesting to think. You could just get into this, and again, the idea of free to play. But,
[00:13:27] this is a pivot because previous statements have been made that, that other games that are in Web 3 are derived as Web 2. 5 again, they’re just names, that that really start out with, well, you do need to understand crypto. So, I do, I mean, it’s still a work in progress. But it’s being talked more about, and again, if we use a little bit of past stuff that comes out of the economic forums inevitably comes out.
[00:13:53] They’ve been very good with local markets and now fleet rentals to, to talk about them and, and things that’ll go. Maybe not fleet rentals as much, but both the Atlas Brew and the Ecom forums are definitely talking more about things before they come. Which I, again, totally think is great. But now of the idea that crypto is being de emphasized.
[00:14:13] Anyways, I just think it’s an interesting pivot, and that pivots to some other thoughts I was having just about pivots. So, one thing was again, I think the free to play is a good idea. Especially if this version is sounds like it’s faster in the sense that it’s, it things go quicker. Not 100 percent sure about that, but it sounded like they said that things were just all sped up, so you can really Go faster, like maybe there’s different, like one, one month cycles or something.
[00:14:44] I’m not sure. Again, it’s all work in progress. But, so I don’t have, I think this is a great idea, but again on this topic of pivots it is interesting because I thought this was Fleet Command, the idea that they were going to take the economy and put it into the UE5 engine even though that the browser based version of Sage would be equivalent to the UE5 version of Sage, which is called Fweet Command, and this sure looks like another web browser.
[00:15:14] Now, I could be wrong. Maybe that’s the missing component, because maybe this interface will come in UE, and then UE5, and so that Takes away from it, but it’s definitely not being called Fleet Command, it’s being called Free to Play, which I don’t think is Fleet Command, so anyways. The other thing we had was, oh, we’re gonna do the shooter, and, and Surge, and Metagravity, and all that, and it feels like, again, the shooter is more prominent now, cause even some community members are running weekend tournaments, I think.
[00:15:48] Wait, is that the first one? I don’t know. Something about the Atlas crew was talking about somebody doing a surge term, and I think surge is a word we use for the shooter. But, now that I think about it, there was another one, but I think they’re racing. But that, again, that’s more of having a UE5 version have multiplayer.
[00:16:02] But, my point on Pivots was shooter, prior to shooter, was racing, somewhere in the middle of there, there was the crew cards, and, I’m, Yeah, anyways, now it sounds like free to play and this other thing called C4, which is like combat, and I’m, can’t remember for sure if that’s Sage Combat or UE5 Combat, and then I’m getting my terms mixed up because I like to think of it as a browser versus Unreal Engine, because browser people can play on any computer, but UE5, they have to have a PC.
[00:16:42] So, I don’t know. And again, it’s early, it’s March. Maybe we’re just hearing these things, maybe the development is all in parallel. Anyways, I guess it comes back to, I thought the browser version was going away. So, I guess at the end, to wrap up Pivots I just kind of wish something got finished, sorry to be a little too blunt, but it’s not that there isn’t excitement for C4 in combat definitely the free to play is intriguing, the shooter’s intriguing, the racing’s intriguing, the crew was intriguing, but I’m getting less and less sure there.
[00:17:21] But having said all of that this goes back to something I’ve definitely mentioned over the years is Star Atlas has been up front that they’re developing this game in public. And, we’re potentially just seeing the things that naturally occur during game development, where things do morph and pivot.
[00:17:39] And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, going back to the free to play, and I thought on fleet rentals, you know, there’s enough people. Again, it feels haphazard, but that could just be like, like what we’re seeing and hearing, where it’s all going according to plan, and I would be shocked if they don’t have a project plan.
[00:18:01] So I, I kind of lean more toward this is just what is being publicly spoken, but there does feel like a lot of pivots. And, and that could be fine, and that’s just part of the development, and we’re just seeing all that stuff that occurs. And, again, perfectly fine. But, again, just got me thinking again about, if we deploy is a good idea, but it feels like a pivot, so.
[00:18:21] Anyways that’s kind of my thoughts on the Status Star Atlas. And then moving into my journey I think I mentioned on the last podcast, I was really going to get to the point where I was going to research everything, and I didn’t. Some other Priorities came up, so I didn’t get to that. So part still trying to move all my carbon back to my central space station.
[00:18:39] Ran out of fuel, so now I stopped and started mining hydrogen. Still wanna do research, still wanna figure out if I should be selling at the local markets and things like that. But going back to that thing about sage being fun it has kind of got to the point where I’m kind of just going through the motions.
[00:18:57] So, but I did kind of think, even if my disappointment of that the MambaX requirements changed I think it was brought up again, that it was just, quote unquote, too easy, and, and that’s completely fair. Just wish I had got in before it was harder. But, having said that still a goal, still makes sense.
[00:19:14] I never expected ships to show up with sorry, with the size of the fleet I have, I would never have expected to build a, I think it’s a, a medium. Small? Anyways, but, you know, something in a short time frame, I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. These things should take a lot of effort or have a lot of resources, one of the two.
[00:19:34] So, anyways we’ll just kind of, I’m just kind of plotting around one of these weekends I’ll get around to doing the research. But still like the idea that my soul fees aren’t really going crazy, or aren’t being spent at a crazy rate. So I think that partly is another reason not to feel like I’m losing Too much, because I’m not paying a lot of soul, I’m still doing some command, given the ships I have, and got my other ships, larger ships, still just in the faction fleet getting some atlas, which I use to swap every week for a little bit of polis.
[00:20:02] So it feels like, again, everything’s kind of happening, so it’s not happening as fast, but again not really into that. Part of the game in the sense that I’m okay being patient because I don’t want to put a lot more money into it. So that’s the trade off. So I’m fine with that. Anyway, so yeah, anyway, so that’s a rambling thing about what I’m doing.
[00:20:21] So again, I’ll go ahead and wrap up. Thanks again for listening. Again, I’m open to anybody wanting to be a guest on my podcast. So that could be a community member who wants to chat about the week in review. Could be another content creator. Could be a builder who wants to promote. their Star Atlas thing.
[00:20:36] And again, obviously totally open to any Star Atlas team members who want to talk about kind of beginner topics and things like that. Also, please do check out my merch store at intergalacticgear. com. I have some mugs, a couple of wall arts, and you can fill out my merch survey. And then if you’re interested in joining a community of Star Atlas gamers who are not member of guilds, willing to pay a small fee to Subsize some software to give some more options for more asynchronous community conversations.
[00:21:02] Please check out intergalacticcoalition. com. And that’s all I had for this week in review of Stardalus. Thanks for listening. Hope you have a great week ahead. This is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald.
