Podcast 130: Star Atlas Weekly Review

In this episode, I recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.

---

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

---

---

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my start list Week and review podcast. This is podcast number 130. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website@intergalacticherald.com. Just look for weekly recap, newsletter number 1 78. So quick summary of things we’ll go over today.

[00:00:18] Pretty much the big news of the last week in star os was the town hall part two, where they talked about hollow sim, a new, let’s see, it’s a level one. A blockchain salona virtual machine called Zinc. And yeah, that was it. But obviously lots of content. It was a two hour town hall. So I’ll go ahead and give you some recaps of that and then my thoughts on it.

[00:00:41] But before we get to that, just wanted to mention a couple things I’m working on is Star Atlas. First is my website, intergalactic carroll.com. Great resource for many things about Star Atlas from beginner’s guides Guild directories. Content Creator Directories recaps of both weekly news, this podcast AI summaries.

[00:00:58] And my latest thing, which is a Star Atlas Discord news announcement Feed where you can sign up to email. Get emailed the announcements that come outta the Star Atlas Discord. Also have two other projects. One is my start with merch store@intergalacticgear.com. It’s open for business, not a ton of products yet.

[00:01:16] Someday I’ll get around to it, but anyways, you can check that out@intergalacticgear.com. Do have a merch survey, so I’d love to get your input. And I’m also trying to set up a Star Atlas Gamer community for people who are not interested in joining guilds. You can still hang out with other Star Atlas.

[00:01:30] Gamers, it’s called Intergalactic Coalition and can be found@intergalacticcoalition.com. So as I mentioned this past week was pretty much completely content about from the town hall part two of the Star Atlas Summer. So it was divided into three parts in order. The first one was more information about HOL Sim.

[00:01:50] So basically as they mentioned when they were doing the current. Beta, I guess if Holliston was basically that a beta, but now they’re gonna move into a season structure and each season can have chapters and each chapter could have either new gameplay or new Quest or whatever. But it’s official now.

[00:02:11] They’re actually able to get some partnerships. The one that they mentioned was an inner a partnership with Solana Wallet. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. Sofa Wallet. Now what was interesting about this is the whole point of Hal Sim is to hide the blockchain. So why would you integrate with Solana Wallet?

[00:02:29] But it does make sense after I thought about it a bit. One I actually use Phantom mostly, so I don’t see that. But so far I have for my sage play for the, sly assistant, so you can have kind of a hot wallet. They do have a banner that pops up, basically an ad. Again, if someone’s in there, Hey, here’s a game now.

[00:02:48] Again, that’s not gonna reach quote unquote mainstream, but it will reach people who already are familiar with crypto. And so this again, could be an easy gateway to get familiar with Star Atlas. Play something that of course costs nothing. And then if people find it interesting, they already are crypto savvy ’cause they might have found it from SoFi or so anyways.

[00:03:07] Makes a lot of sense. It felt like there might be other partnerships maybe down the road, but this is the one at least they announced for this first season. Yeah, maybe first chapter, not a hundred. Sure. They did mention that everything is reset, so any progress that you made during the beta will be reset and not a hundred percent sure, but it feels like that’s the uniqueness of Hall Sim that each one of these seasons and or chapters kinda resets.

[00:03:31] And so again, it’s a new challenge. You get to start over and things like that. So again, it totally makes sense. It’s not designed for. Progression. It’s not about real life assets on the blockchain, things like that. It’s just supposed to be a fun game, free to play and browser based. So I think a lot there.

[00:03:48] But they also alluded to a new feature called, and I think they called it Battle Pass. Again, there was lots of content and we’ll see when official announced come comes out. But this Battle Pass would give you enhancements and I think it was. I’m not a hundred percent sure. We’ll see. But the key point is that these battle passes will be traditional payment processes and they happen to mention they’ll use just general credit cards using a payment processor called Stripe.

[00:04:12] So definitely not any crypto, but as I think was mentioned in definitely I thought about after the fact. This all makes sense, free to play. But if you want to, get something more, hey. Give us your credit card, here’s a, type it in and boom, you get something. Yeah, I think again, the fact that I had good results during the beta program a lot of interest from the Stratos community in it.

[00:04:34] And again, definitely ways to get other people being browser-based. Again, no barrier to entry on your computer. It’s not needing the UE five Epic Game Studio install, so you’re not limited to just windows on a powerful computer. So again. Pluses and pluses. I think they said that’s gonna be starting pretty soon, so I’m not sure if it’s this upcoming week, but it did feel like the rollout of the new, season would be right around the corner. So then the and that took up about an hour of the two hour one. So there is a lot of details that I toy glossed over star Alice TV has the full recording and I did do a AI summary you can get if you subscribe to my podcast feed@intergalacticcarroll.com.

[00:05:15] So there were a lot of more information and if you’ve listened podcasts before I. I just don’t have the time to play all stem cell. But I do admit with the seasons and the kind of, hey, the product actually exists, I would be more temped. But then I think just bad time into the summer here in the normal atmosphere.

[00:05:35] Got one more family activity. Kids kid will be starting school soon. Another kid is still in college. There’s just a lot of stuff going on and. I’m still playing Sage, so it’s fine. Anyways the last half was also taken up by another thing, but this was a totally new unexpected, so something they’re calling zinc.

[00:05:55] The URL is Z, do I? And K, so apparently the A new domain name and. I’ll have to admit, when I first saw it I was actually just skimming the recording on the day of the thing. ’cause again, they were saying, oh, there’s gonna be something new. You won’t, no one can guess. And things like that.

[00:06:13] Definitely didn’t have any clue this was coming. And, but as I was skimming, I admit it was very hard to understand what it was. Now, again, I’m skimming it, so totally fine. But I think my biggest kind of initial reaction was. This isn’t a game I just don’t understand. And if you listen to the last couple podcasts, I had some speculations about what the thing we may not have heard about was.

[00:06:37] But then the next day at night, I listened to the first half and then listened to the second half. So basically was able to listen to it in full. And I would encourage anybody to to take a look at Star House TV again for that full thing. I do also have the AI summary, but there was lots of information and I’m sure the AI.

[00:06:55] Summary left out a lot of things. So I’m gonna try to go over what I thought were the highlights of it. But again still feel barely scratching the surface. And again, I don’t consider that a negative. It just, this was the announcement, so I. We’re gonna have lots of questions.

[00:07:08] There’s only so much you can talk about in an hour, so I think that’s perfectly fine. So they did mention that this syn has been in years in the development. What they meant by that was this seems like the I’m a backup. I’m not a blockchain expert. I barely understand the technology and I definitely don’t understand the derivatives that can be done off of these blockchains.

[00:07:31] What’s a level one? I’m not really sure. It’s just not the main Salona blockchain, but it’s a copy. So there and then it’s using something called the Salona Virtual Machine. Got some IT background. I know what a virtual machine is. It’s a way to take a physical piece of computer server hardware and make it virtual.

[00:07:49] So I got that and I assume that might be the same thing. So maybe that’s just the implementation of the copy of the Salona blockchain, but. There was mentioned that this is the next iteration of Atlas Net, which was the internal development copy of Solana. The team used to develop Star Atlas and all their programs, so it’s just going that next lot.

[00:08:11] They said it is completely. Functionally equivalent to Solana. So all their programming is the same. Anybody who wanted to build on it, if they know Solana, they know this. So again, that all sounded good. Not really sure exactly what that means, but again, just that’s not my background. But when they started talking about impacts to the start Atlas games, one was the reduction in sage fees.

[00:08:38] If you’ve been, if you have played Sage at all, you realize that every transaction costs Solana to do the fee transaction fee. So apparently by building an effect, a copy of Solana calling it the Zinc they are able to control the fees better. Now, I am not a hundred percent sure how that is.

[00:09:00] They mentioned it’ll be a 99 per 99% reduction in the fees. I’d like to learn more about what that actually means, but let’s just take it on face value. If something costs a dollar on Solana, now it costs one penny, and I think it’s actually gonna be more like there’s one penny on Solana that costs 0.001 pennies.

[00:09:18] So yeah, this was something that I’ve been mentioning many times that, Sage is interesting totally fine playing the game by spending time, but. Yeah, everything you do, like I have a one ship that I just, we’ve said in there because I know if I did anything with it, it’s ineffective for the fee from a fee standpoint than a larger fleet.

[00:09:40] So I could be doing more so again. This makes a ton of sense. If this is what ultimately the only benefit of zinc is for a Star Atlas gamer is the reduction in fees. Later on, as more information came out, they did mention that this would also improve performance. So the real two impacts on Star Atlas gaming was the reduction in cost.

[00:10:07] Yeah, I think, let’s say cost of fees. Not that there isn’t fees, it’s just the cost of the fees and the ability to control performance in the sense that only things running on the zinc blockchain network. I don’t know, what do you wanna call, how, I don’t know how to refer to it, are stuff that rates just start out with was mentioned either in the presentation or later on, a, a tweet from.

[00:10:28] CEO, Michael Wagner was that when the meme coins for Solana went crazy and people couldn’t they quick move and it didn’t move and things like that zinc will completely eliminate that because it’s just the game. So again, that makes a ton of sense. Definitely would improve. Maybe not.

[00:10:46] Performance on a technical standpoint, but user experience satisfaction would greatly increase ’cause things would just work. And I think, again, we’re seeing this as part of what Halim is. ’cause again, that seems to be some sort of controlled behind the scenes blockchain. So nobody complained about it being slow.

[00:11:06] One small benefit they mentioned, and I wasn’t exactly sure how this will work, is it will reduce these rent fees. ’cause every time you have to do something, you have to. Rent an account or again, this is where I don’t understand blockchain, but again, the only good thing about these rent fees is supposedly getting ’em back when you stop something.

[00:11:23] But it’s just tied up resources. So anyways, so those are the biggest Ben proposed benefits to start out with gamers and without understanding all of the technical and all the other things and anything else, I’m gonna mention a second that. It feels good. So some other things I mentioned, they did mention a roadmap rollout of things, but this kinda gets into new tokens and airdrops.

[00:11:49] And again, this I think is, to me anyway, is just gonna need a lot more understanding, a lot more explanation. And sounds like, again, the team just announced it, so not all that stuff was fully explained, which again is fine. They did mention that the new C four would definitely be running on this zinc so that.

[00:12:07] Makes a lot of sense. There will be a naming service, so I know, like I have a intergalactic Caral, so address and sounds like they’re gonna have Inc addresses. And it sounds like that might be actually a paid thing, but again, that’s fine. Generates revenue. And they did mention there will be some different monetization phases.

[00:12:26] And it seems like some of that might be related to how you, accumulate experience, and again, this is where things were kinda not glossed over but moved over quickly just because I don’t think they were wanting to go in or they couldn’t go into depth. So something about the zinc will have profiles, which I think is our star Atlas profiles, but then you’ll get experience on the profile.

[00:12:48] But this isn’t necessarily your experience in game though, it sounds like it’s related anyways, I think there’s a lot there, but they did mention there’ll be ways to monetize that. I’ll get to it maybe near the end. Anything that has a potential to help with monetization, which means funding for development of Star Atlas.

[00:13:06] Yeah, sounds good. There will be another token they mentioned how this is different than Atlas and Ps and pros and cons. And again, wait for more. Information to really understand because it’s new token, there’ll be airdrops and those airdrops apparently are gonna be tied to activity in starless products during experience.

[00:13:26] The dimensional white pipe, white papers coming. And that’s I think, again. Not all information was disclosed, but that’s okay. Some people during the brew or during the town hall ask about security. Again, totally over my head. Somebody asked about bridging between the zinc network and the salon network, and I’m like okay.

[00:13:45] Yeah. They’re just so many things that just. I just don’t have the background in. But they did mention and to wrap up this zinc that the next brew will be all about questions. So I think that’s perfectly fine. And they even created a new channel within the Star Atlas Discord. So again, all makes sense.

[00:14:02] And then they ended the town hall. I’ll have some more things to say about that zinc in general in a second, but then they ended the town hall with the announcement of a new website landing page. So if you go to star outs.com, the front page is now different. There’s a immediate email signup to get a game key, and that will then give you a new guide to start out with PDF that you can download.

[00:14:22] So if you haven’t checked that out and you haven’t subscribed again, if you’re willing to give an email address, which of course I’m all about. I head there and get if nothing else, you just get future announcements via email. So anyway, so that was pretty much it. Again, it was a two hour town hall.

[00:14:36] If you’re interested in listening to, in its entirety, please check out Star s TV on YouTube. And again, I do have my AI summary. You can check out on my podcast feed@intergalacticcar.com. I’m get. Talk about the state of Star Atlas and give some of my thoughts analysis, what I’m thinking about all this.

[00:14:52] Definitely think on Hollist Sim as I alluded to. I think moving into these official seasons and chapters is great development in the ma maturation maturing of that product. Definitely with the web browser experience, I think it’s a great way doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to buy ships, you just start with nothing and play lawn or new tutorial.

[00:15:10] And as was mentioned, this will. If not directly educates you on how to play sage, it definitely starts showing you some of the mechanics. Anyway, so I think it’s great. Zinc again, as I mentioned, my first impressions when skimming the video, not sure why it’s in the game, but reduction in the fees.

[00:15:26] They did say that basically it’ll be swapping salona fees for zinc fees, but if zinc is worth less than a Solana coin, that’s how you get. Less impact and fees better performance in the game. But one of the things I think is really intriguing, it took me a little while for this to sink in that it’s a way to bring new users to start out.

[00:15:48] So my understanding is that as a new token that will be created. And will be airdropped. This will generate interest from the broader crypto community for people who wants to participate in this airdrop. The way to gain qualify, I’m not really sure that’s the right term for parts tokens in this airdrop is to place our Atlas projects and each one of those projects or products will give you.

[00:16:18] Experience, I guess they’re calling it. I’m not, again, something. And then you’ll be rewarded at certain airdrops with tokens. So to level up you need to play games. Cool. Yeah, that’s gonna obviously bring new people into Star Atlas would then have the possibility they may choose. And again, depending on which product, there might be, I hope, anyways, there is integration with Sage with UE five.

[00:16:46] So the gun play, the racing hol sim they did mention that the lockers for the Dow for the Polis and the Atlas will somehow thing, so it. I’m not sure on timing. Again, we haven’t received the white paper, and again, this was just the announcement, but definitely they said it, the goal was to integrate with the Star House products so that people who want to again, I’m not sure I’m saying the right terms, gain thingies to get more zinc tokens through an airdrop.

[00:17:13] We’ll have to engage in the game, and that might mean buying a ship or who knows what. So yeah. I need more information, but at this point I have to say I’m cautiously Optim, make mystic that this is a great way to raise their narrowness, to bring in gamers or basically anybody who’s interested in the airdrops, but in effect might find the game interesting.

[00:17:38] Now, on the other side of the coin, maybe they’re just there for that. I know I’ve been given airdrops of tokens and again, immediately sell them. But the tokens were given to me without any. Engagement. So it seems again, subject to white papers and more information that you won’t get anything unless should do something to star a Star House product.

[00:17:58] So that’s seems like a great thing. So current Star. So to summarize then, my initial impressions are zinc, regardless of being a level one salona virtual machine thing with profiles and other stuff. Okay. Yeah, that, that could all be really cool, but. The biggest thing if you’re a starless gamer is reduction in fees and better performance playing something like Sage.

[00:18:25] Awesome. From a business viability standpoint, if this other thing called zinc brings people into Starless in order to get tokens from an airdrop, okay that’s a marketing effort. That’s an advertising effort. Buy ads and get people in. You could hire influencers and get people in.

[00:18:47] These are just tactics. The overall strategy is the same and grow the user base of your product, so also good. So yeah, I think again, cautiously cash. Yeah, cautiously optimistic there. If anything, my biggest negative is hopefully this isn’t a sign of always building technology. And again, that goes back to my kind of initial impressions.

[00:19:10] This isn’t a game. This isn’t, yeah. I don’t know. Again, that’s the problem when people ask, Hey, you’ll never believe it, and then you brainstorm, you daydream about things and then it’s not one of those things. But again, if it fits those things, reducing fees in the game.

[00:19:27] Improving performance in the game and as a way to potentially bring people into the game. Yeah, I can’t see this as a lose, but hopefully again, this pivots to the game. Which leads me into the last thing is we still have one more town hall. So in two more weeks there’ll be town hall part three.

[00:19:46] Again, town hall part one was, wow, I already forgot. Oh, UE five. Yeah, it’s pretty all that. Then they have Halim, then this brand new product called Zinc and Sure feels like the next town hall better be about C four and Sage. And I only say that because if it isn’t about that, yeah.

[00:20:05] And then maybe this was just a clever way to order these things. If you waited to the town hall three to say this, and you’d already said C four might have taken away a little of the impact of the C four update. My personal speculation is that zinc, they did say zinc and will come, or sorry, C four will run on zinc.

[00:20:23] So it seems like, you gotta have this thing nailed down before you can nail down C four. So they seem to be having to tie together. So if I have to speculate, which I’m gonna so I think town hall part three will be about C four and perhaps could even be when they open the test for that.

[00:20:38] Because the sooner they get that testing if you want to really, oh, because they mentioned dates for zinc, which was something in September and something in December. So if C four is gonna run on it. It feels like C four needs to be around. Maybe we’ll finally get also release states.

[00:20:58] But I think those release states are easier to hit at this point. One, they’ve obviously been de developing C four. You can see the, some of the results to me and Holim, and they have announced before they will have a full open test to iron everything out. And if that’s multiple months of September to December timeframe, that’s a.

[00:21:20] Really good amount of testing. Yeah, so we’ll see. Could be wrong. But again, there’s really nothing else out there. If this was the big announcement, nobody was expecting commission accomplished. So if they release something else. I have to admit, it feels like now we’re maybe doing too many things.

[00:21:37] But again seems to all fit together. So we’ll see two more weeks or week and a half now after this. So we’ll see where the things go. So I, to wrap up just real quick, talking about my journey point, start out list again. I’m playing Sage trying to find all the resources, a craft from Mamba X, which.

[00:21:53] Again, I have a bad feeling aren’t available anymore, but again, whatever. So I finally finished moving all the titanium ore back to the CSS, so that’s now got all the diamond I needed, all the titanium more. My minor has been mining Luminate at one of the medium risk zones, but way closer to the CSS.

[00:22:11] Actually started my fleet transport fleet moving it back and. It’s moving a lot of stuff, but again shorter distance and things like that. Keep in mind on that and then keep going down that list. And I think I mentioned a few podcasts back, even if I can’t get ’em, mom X or they raise the requirements, all these resources are gonna have some input or some usage.

[00:22:30] And C four with the idea that claims stakes now need resources to, what was it? Build buildings on the claim stakes. So again, I don’t really feel like any of this is totally wasted because again, those resources, I, if they disappear, I, it would seem like they’re only increasing and in past they went from the four to now how many, and again, they’re gonna move to hundreds more.

[00:22:53] So it, it all feels like this is, yeah nothing lost stockpiling these for the next version. So anyway. That’s pretty much it. Thanks for listening. You can totally open. If anybody wants to be a guest on the podcast, you can reach out on my website, interlock carroll.com. Please check out the website where you’re there.

[00:23:09] It’s a great resource for other star Atlas things from, many beginners guide to many directories of star Atlas things from tools to content creators to guilds. I do have a couple of things you could sign up. Score up for my email, weekly news recap. Thing email, sorry. The AI summary of the community events and my latest, which is a Discord news announcement email feed that you can sign up for.

[00:23:31] Also, please do check out my merch store@intergalacticgear.com. And if you’re interested in joining a star US gamer community that isn’t a guild, please check intergalactic coalition.com for that. Otherwise, thanks very much for listening to the past week in Star Atlas. This is Matt with Intergalactic Herald.

[00:23:46] Have a great week ahead.