Podcast 146: Star Atlas Weekly Review

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Podcast Transcript

This is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Startless Week in Review podcast. This is podcast number hundred and forty six. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website at intergalactic herald dot com. Just look for weekly recap newsletter a hundred ninety four.

So just a quick summary of things that happened this past week in Star Atlas…

The community team did two events. One was an Atlas Brew where the cofounder and chief product officer, Danny, went over the some things on the product map and the Sage editor suite. that was on Wednesday. And then on Thursday, the economic forum with Chris VP of economics. I’m not sure what his title is. I don’t know. They don’t use they don’t put titles in Discord. So, anyways, he went over some changes they’re gonna do to the economy.
so that was, a lot of information in both of those. So that’s, pretty much what I’ll be talking about today, along with kind of my thoughts on the state of Star Atlas and my playing Star Atlas. Before I get to that, just wanna mention a couple projects I have going on in the Star Atlas ecosystem. First, of course, is my website, intergracity carol dot com. It’s a great resource website.
It’s got guides, beginners guides, links to, other content creator videos, directories of content creators, tools, skills, also recaps, one, the, weekly newsletter recap, but also any AI summaries of those two, community events that I’ll be talking about. And then I do have if you wanna sign up for, Discord announcements from the Star Atlas team, you can have those sent directly to your email. So you can check all that out at intergalactic hero dot com. Also, I do have a Star Atlas merch store at intergalactic gear dot com. not a great selection. Kinda been on the back burner for a number of reasons, but you can still take a look at it.
if you’re looking for a Star Atlas mug, there’s some there. Also, I do have a merch survey you can fill out. And then lastly, I’m trying to get together with other Star House gamers who aren’t interested in joining guilds to, nevertheless, start our own community, called intergalactic coalition dot com. It’ll be a place where you can hang out and chat. it’s a little different interface than Discord.
Hopefully, more asynchronous, and you get email alerts when information you’re interested in is updated. So check that out at intergalactic coalition dot com, and I do have an interest survey there…

So let’s get into the main things that happened this past week in Star Atlas. As I mentioned, the community team did two events. First was the Atlas Brews. They normally do waste my time Wednesday mornings. most of it was filled with a kind of…demo from, Danny, the chief product…yeah.
Chief product officer. but they did before they got into that, they did go over the product map, and this was something I had brought up. I can’t remember if it was the last one or two ago that was posted in the, foundation room where, Danny kinda organized all the different parts of the products that are occurring there. So, again, if you listen to that one, you got most of the information. But it was still nice to hear, him describe it.
It. And so I pulled out just a couple, things that, were highlights for me. One was he said that,
one thing that, they’re trying to do again with the economy well, Zinc at the base is the blockchain and the economy and then the two different kind of product…focuses with the UE5, software and then the web or mobile with Sage. He did mention that future developments, will have UE5 elements that will impact resolving things that might be occurring in c four. And that was the first time I ever heard of that. Now we got the current one where if you’re playing in the shooter game, you can earn, let’s see, ink, which is a thing needed for some of the crafting recipes. and that’s fine.

But this was kinda more talking about literally that, you know, there might be, some sort of faction, conquest of territory or something, and then you might have to kinda zoom down and then there’s a UE five component. So, I think we’re starting to finally see at least how the pieces can be put together where there will be,
interaction between both of those, not just for the economy, but actually perhaps, you know, you gotta fight a battle or something with…crew in order to take over a territory or something. Again, could all be still speculation, but, still was interesting here. the other thing that, he kind of, mentioned, and we haven’t heard well, I haven’t heard this in a while, but it was something I thought a few years ago was really a pivot of how we think about Star Atlas. In fact, it was, related to, when I had an interview with Jose, the lore rider, and he was really emphasizing crew. And this was before the crew members came out.
Since then, when crew did come out, their only kind of real utility has been for crafting. again, there’s lots of things about names and visuals and rarities and things like that, but it kinda again, nothing happened. And again, I know they were talking about a crew app,
with move to earn, which, unfortunately, if I remember correctly, the algorithm to track the movement could not be, made bulletproof so people couldn’t game it. But, anyways, Danny alluded to that…
And, again, this just kinda you gotta be reminded of where their vision is. But that the real actual experience, he said, was be the crews interacting with the ships, not the ships. And again, it was nice to hear because, again, back to what I mentioned a couple years ago, hearing…we’ve been so focused on ships as the thing, but we’re people and we will interact as our crew members and the crew members get progression. And, yeah, sure the ships can have progression too, but the ships are what you have. And, again, I think when we talk about things like claim stakes and these crafting haps and all that, yeah, again, you might have a fleet and a whole bunch of, crew and they’re all doing things.

But, again, you’re still gonna have you as a crew member and you’re gonna interact with your ship. You might go to different ships and things like that as opposed to this sort of just…
I don’t know. We’ll call it strategic general looking at above and an RTS type of thing. So, again, it was really nice hearing that because, again, that, I don’t know. It just feels…
I mean, I want the general overview or excuse me, being a general on the battlefield, moving ships around, and fleets and staff. But, ultimately, I think…there’s an aspect where someone might just have a single crew member in a single ship, and that could be incredibly enjoyable experience, not having to have all these things. I think we’re just used to in the last few years that everything’s about ships. So, anyways, again, that was kind of a nice perspective to have brought back, especially from one of the cofounders who’s leading the design of the product. And then the last thing he mentioned was that Fleet Command, which, for people who may not have been following along for a while, is…the kind of taking the web version that is Sage now and taking all those things where you can do mining and movement and transport and scanning and move it into UE five, and that thing will be called Fleet Command.

He did mention that idea will be the first full cross platform code base. And I think…again, I have to translate because I’m not sure what that meant. But kinda what meant to me was that then they can go to everything. So this could be the web excuse me, the traditional UE five. Maybe there’s a mobile version of UE five.
I’m not sure. But, again, that will be the thing that can go everywhere. So PCs, consoles, things like that. So, again, it was nice hearing all of that. then the rest or the majority of it was going over the Sage editor suite, s e s. Sorry. Alice is great with acronyms.

But, anyways and so he was showing some of the updates he had made to the suite. And what he did mention again that this is a tool. it’s designed as a tool, but he really…
enhanced it to be sort of showing how he’s actually editing the map that where it’s coming with c four. So that was really cool. And he went into a lot of how he was building different things using Vibe Coding and things like that. So, it was a great demo. great to see all of this stuff, and I’ll comment more in a bit.
So anyway so, yeah, that was yeah. It was Peru. Then on Thursday, the economic forum occurred. Chris, the head of economics, mainly was talking, but Michael Ignacio was there…for clarifications if needed, though didn’t feel like he had to clarify too much. So, anyway, so what they mentioned was that they are very well aware of that the economy has many pain points, and they mentioned three.
now this could be for players, but also for the development team. And one was that, no primary ship shell ship sales in USDC have occurred in, I thought he said years,
which, wow. but I guess yeah. I mean, the price is high. So, I know the ships have come out, so there’s no reason. But, anyways, they also mentioned that the token sales, which the team has to do, so selling at Osterpolis, is hurting community morale.

And, the ways to earn and play in Sage are very limited. So those were the kind of pain points related to the economy. So I guess a lot of discussion was done, and…sounds like they’re doing this, but it also sounded like they were trying to, you know, test to see how the community thought to what they’re calling the open market operations…
O m o, again, acronyms. But anyways, and there’s some slides available in a PDF. I’m not sure. It was posted in the chat. I’m not sure how you get to the past chat.
But anyways, so what the goal is that the…Star Atlas or, the developers will sell ships in USDC from their remaining inventory. So I what I think this means is there are ships on the marketplace, and they are the original price. And now they’re gonna start selling those, but they’re gonna drop the price. And that’s where it got, really technical. But, again, I’ve said in the past, there’s some parts of these economic form, that and what I know I’m listening to late at night, but just it’s just hard to take it all in.

But anyways this will be, yeah. So a way to do that, but they’re gonna drop the prices. Then they also mentioned they’re gonna do some buying of ships, like the team would actually put orders to buy your ships. Okay? And then the goal is to reduce the Atlas and Polis liquidations they have to do.
they did mention there’ll have to be lots of guardrails, so it’s not like they’re gonna flood the market with all the ships. They may only put up, you know, tens to hundreds of a certain ship at a certain time. So very manual process, not just drop everything and let it go. they did mention the timeline was December, but, again, it is December, so I’m not sure. You know, and we know the team goes on, winter break.

So the window is the window of December is not the full month. they also mentioned they might have new ship models available for, not yeah. Redemption. And that they are gonna revamp the Mamba x and the MaxHawk. So they said this was, basically kinda getting feedback on this, and the whole thing would be just, you know, changing and going there. So then they had a…
q and a at the end, so people on the live chat could post. Couple of questions that came up was, that the primary ships, will be at the secondary market prices, and that’s where but a little bit higher. again, so that okay. I heard that, but, again, I’m still not sure. somebody asked about bots, and, again, it was kinda stated that’s not really a concern.

If somebody’s buying, they’re buying. And I wasn’t a hundred percent sure…
that revamping the Mamba x and the Max Hog was to actually lower their requirements. But, again, I’m not sure I heard that right, so don’t quote me on that. So, anyways, but, yeah, both of these, the Atlas Brew and the Economic Forum, if you wanna listen to the whole video, StarUs TV’s YouTube channel has that. I really appreciate that those are recorded. And then if you just want a couple minute…t o d r to London Reed, you can check out my, AI summaries, audio recaps. If you’re on this podcast feed, you’re already getting them. But if for some reason you don’t get them, you can go to my website and find those and just listen to the recaps. So, anyways yeah. So those are the two, events that occurred this way. So excuse me.

Occurred this week. So let me go ahead and, give you kind of my thoughts on that. So first, it was really cool to see the Sage, editor suite. it was very cool, very interesting to visualize the c four map. And I guess, and, again, I’m not sure about this because I thought somebody said it’s still gonna kinda be a two d map. This, view kinda gave it a little more, three d volume. But, again, not sure if that’s true that you’ll actually go up or down, not just left or right or x, y, and z, whatever, you know, coordinate systems and geometry…
But I have to admit after, sleeping on it. And, again, I did listen to both these late last night, and, yeah, I was just tired too. But, anyways…
I’m not sure well, I don’t know. I’m not sure…how this has to do with anything to do with the game, but it is their development tool. So, I mean, that’s cool. and, again, it might have just been, getting a little, sidetracked by seeing, like, well, there’s a ship flying around. and, again, I’m not sure if that was the intent or that was just because it can be done.
I don’t know. But, again, as a development tool yeah, it’s it was cool to see. And, again, this might just be something about, this whole concept of building in public because, I mean, normally, we would never see this. So, again, it’s a tool when they added some things to the tool that maybe relate to the tool and maybe don’t, but who cares? I mean, it’s still the tool. So, and I guess at the end of the day and this has been on my to do list for a while, and I sorry.

I just don’t have time. I do wanna take a look at this. And, again, it seems like this is something going forward that if they’re constantly tweaking c four, this tool, I would assume, is still available to us. It doesn’t feel like this is, like they’re gonna take it away once the thing’s released. I don’t know.
so I’m hoping maybe, now I’m thinking about it, maybe on my winter break, maybe I can actually take a look at this. So anyways,
but overall, it was still great to see. it’s always cool to see some of these things. And, again, it’s just my lack of time to get in and kinda explore…
next, this kind of open market operations economy change. I, again, I was very tired listening, so I’m sure I probably missed some connections there. But…
it seems like the main pain point, at least what I kinda get the…feeling from monitoring Discord is, again, the selling of the tokens to fund basically the development of the game is causing lots of things, and that should be changed. So…
yeah, I mean, makes sense if they wanna try to sell stuff to make…
dollars USDC. Yeah. That’s great. that’s income. But…
yeah. But I guess…

I’m still not sure why…and maybe this makes sense to make…the plain sage make more sense to have the chain shoe. Again, it…
again, it could just be I was tires. So, but, I just I mean, I’m not sure again why they’re reducing the price of the ship sold by the team. It’s gonna make people buy ships. I mean, I could just buy them from other players. And, again, I know that doesn’t help the team with revenue so they can keep bunding the development of the game, paying salaries, and things like that.
But…

I’m a gamer. I that’s not my concern. You know? I mean, again, there it’s nothing like you can’t want to support the team and pay a little extra and give them that for that ship, but I’m still like, well, why do I want the ship? if, again, no one’s been buying ships…from the team because they were so expensive, that’s one thing.
But I don’t know. So, again and I’m not I’ve said this many times. I am not an expert on economic…theory and philosophy and all that. So I there are way smarter people, like Chris, who’s doing this. So I’m not saying this doesn’t…
isn’t a good idea. I just can’t. I’m trying to go with, I’m a gamer. What do I want out of this? So, I am kind of very curious as a gamer.

Of course, if they release new ships to craft, that’s cool. the Mamba x was the one I was trying for, and then they drastically increased the…
requirements for that. So and with, Solana fees, I just stopped playing because there was literally wasting money and not and then as I mentioned before, and then with the new Zinc. And if I waited, then I would get Zinc experience. So it’s like, again, why keep doing anything right now? So and maybe that’s the whole point, that this is something that by changing these…ship prices, will have be a technique that will make Sage more interesting to new gamers once Zynq is launched.

So, again, as I my understanding on Zynq, to earn experience, one way to do that is to buy ships, but not secondary from the team. Okay. Cool. that makes sense. And so if the price was closer to what players want to sell it for, then, yeah, maybe I would well, and buying that ship from…a game a player in the economy doesn’t give me a Zinc experience, but from the team it does.
Okay. that makes a ton of sense. And keeping that price much closer to,
what people are thinking the price is, not the original price. Yeah. that makes a lot of sense…
Because, again, I guess, to make Sage more interesting to play, which is another way to earn Zinc experience, you need ships. So yeah. Okay. I’m seeing the pattern or I’m seeing a connection, so so maybe. And if that’s truly why they’re doing this, then…that makes a lot of sense.

And, again, if the other benefit is that those are then direct sales of the new ships to the team and they have more money and they don’t have to sell tokens and that’s a win for everybody, then, yeah, it it’s all makes sense. But I guess I kinda end with, well, again, why am I buying a ship? So if, again, the ultimate purpose is, hey. Let’s make ships easier to buy from, which gives more money to the team, which then allows you to play Sage, which allows you to earn…zinc experience, then, yeah, I get it. And maybe, again, this will come out next week or, you know, a lot of times I’ve said that the first announcement is one thing, but it’s the brew after or a document or something like that or even the community posting about it.
So, again,
probably was tired last night, but I’m like, I think this all makes sense, but I just don’t yeah. Again, I need to, you know, bluntly, I need to know what’s in it for me and, I guess, if ships were cheaper, but I don’t need to buy more ships. So, again, maybe I’m not the target for this. Maybe it’s the new people that are maybe interested in Zinc and want to get involved with that. And then to do that, they gotta play Star Atlas.
And to play Star Atlas, they gotta buy ships. Cool. Then this is brilliant. Makes tons of sense. so we’ll see.
And then to wrap up, there was a little bit of…
mention again about the upcoming town hall. So I thought I’d just kinda speculate about that because, you know, why not? so, hope, you know, they have been mentioning they will release things. So…sure feels like, well, let me back Up.

So I hope it’s not Zinc. I hope it’s really not releasing. I know there’s a countdown. I just did my daily check and said five more days. So it feels like, yeah, that’s gonna be ending too.
But in five days, that’s let’s see. December eleventh…
No promotion has been done about this next season. So I just I really hope that that’s just something they do in January or beyond because it just feels it would feel really rushed, and I would hope we can have a great launch of that. That, again, launch to the broader…crypto market or crypto people or, you know, whatever. I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re marking this as a crypto…
you know, ideal…customer or if this is gaming thing. I don’t know. we’ll see, I guess. but what I think does look really good, would be the next version of, something to do with UE five. And, again, they had talked about this kinda single player thing.

And if that’s been worked on for a while, then that seems like a great thing to release. Holosim, chapter two, I think, is the next one, also feels like a really good one. They’ve been really quiet on that. And, again, they said they wouldn’t release it until they got the infra infrastructure more stable. So that seems really good.
However, if the infrastructure is not stable and the team goes on break, well, then yeah…
c four, sure feel like it should be coming, but, we do know that there will be a test first. So I don’t know. Maybe they release a test. But if they haven’t released a test, obviously, it’s not gonna be released. And, I guess, a little of seeing the Sage…editor, that was demoed and seeing more of a map, it feels like, again, this is…still further off.

But, again, getting the testing going, makes a lot of sense, plus that would, probably continue to stress test the ZYNC platform. But, again, is that you have to have ZYNC out before you can have that test on ZYNC? Or, again, can you test it on the test of zinc? again, these are…too many things that we don’t know as outsider. So but the final thing is just, physical timing.
So…I’m recording this on December sixth. Team will break on Friday, December nineteenth.
pretty sure that was what was posted. So that’s just two weeks, and that’s a lot. And we don’t have a date for the town hall, though that could happen almost instantaneously. They have in the past, Tony gave him maybe one or two days, announcement for that. So, again, just doesn’t feel like a lot of time to me to launch, well, definitely not to launch anything to the general public.

So, again, I think a UE five thing, that’s a slam dunk. If it’s ready, do it. Hall sim, feels like, again, there should be some public stuff about that or else then you’re already behind. I don’t know. And like I said, c four test would be fine because that’s not public…
Yeah. And, like I said, Zinc, I really hope they wait on that. So, anyway, so that’s, pretty much it. My kinda speculation for what’s gonna happen in the next two weeks are actually what’s gonna happen to town hall. And then lastly, again, my journey playing star Alice, haven’t changed much.
Just doing my daily checks on zinc. haven’t progressed very far, but, again, I haven’t done anything other than I think it’s just my stake, Paulus, that’s accumulating. So anyway.

So yeah. That’s it.
hope you enjoyed this. Again, totally open if anybody wants to be a guest on the podcast. Again, it could be community members, talk about the week in Star Atlas, could be other, content creators…
builders, of course, any StarOS team members if you wanna come on and chat about anything. You can reach out at intergalactic carol dot com, from my contact page, or else you can reach me on Discord. again, while you’re there at intergalactic carol dot com, please do check out any of my guides and directories and recaps and Discord news feed. If you want a Star Atlas mug, please check out intergalactic gear dot com. And, again, if you like to get together with other Star Atlas gamers who aren’t joining guilds, please check out intergalactic coalition dot com.
So, again, this is Matt with Intergalactic Hero. That’s what happened this past week in Star Atlas. Have a great week ahead…