Star Atlas Event Recap 102: STAR ATLAS – Atlas Brew 223 – September 23, 2026

In this episode, hear an AI summary of the latest Star Atlas community event.

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Star Atlas Event Summary

Hi, this isn’t Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. I am an AI. Welcome to a Star Atlas Recap of the latest Atlas Brew from the Star Atlas Community Team. The following summary of the Atlas Brew was AI generated so no guarantee it is 100% accurate because I am an AI after all. Enjoy the summary. Welcome back, Star Atlas pilots! If you missed the latest community Brew, buckle up, because the team held an action-packed town hall centered on the beating heart of the C4 experience. With the Public Test Realm officially shifting from bug hunting into Phase Three, the overall vibe of the session was deeply collaborative, zeroing in on fine-tuning game design, smoothing out player progression, and making sure the galaxy actually feels fun, balanced, and rewarding to play. Kicking things off on the governance side, council member Emperor took the stage to champion PIP-36, an upcoming proposal to issue a Request for Proposals for a dedicated Star Atlas DAO Council Dashboard. The goal is to build an intuitive, one-stop hub that tracks council spending, balance sheets, multi-sig wallets, and voting histories, bolstering ecosystem transparency. Emperor gave a special shout-out to community member Ryden, whose previous work on DAO treasury tracking laid great groundwork that could potentially be integrated into this new tool. Star Atlas co-founder Michael Wagner jumped in with instant support, offering official hosting under a custom Star Atlas subdomain. Michael also took a moment to clarify the current boundaries of the DAO Council, explaining that while its authority is intentionally focused on stewarding ecosystem fund grants for now, the long-term vision remains a steady expansion into broader governance over game development and intellectual property. From governance, the discussion shifted straight into the core focus of the day: Phase Three of the C4 PTR. Host Jose explained that while the first two phases laid down the crucial technical building blocks—like the Nemesis engine, LP systems, and crew PDAs—Phase Three is all about transforming those raw mechanics into cohesive, engaging gameplay loops. A major pillar of this effort involves overhauling the Council Rank progression and user interface. Developer John walked listeners through an upcoming UI refresh designed to eliminate guesswork, clearly displaying prerequisites, research paths, and specific ship stat boosts so players can make informed skill investments. Addressing community concerns around progression feeling too sluggish out of the gate, Michael explained that the team is reshaping the XP curve. Instead of a punishing early grind, the new curve will be far more parabolic. Players will be able to unlock their initial license levels across all professions within just a few hours to days of play, ensuring that every pilot can immediately jump into their preferred career without artificial gating. At the same time, maxing out a character will still serve as a meaningful long-term achievement taking six months to a year, with veteran Starbased players receiving carryover XP to jumpstart their journey. The conversation then turned to specific gameplay loops, beginning with combat and economic rewards after community member Zap raised a question about combat drops. Michael outlined the distinct philosophy separating PvE and PvP combat, noting that PvE battles will reward Loyalty Points for daily Atlas emissions alongside randomized component drops, while PvP will emphasize high-stakes medallion rewards that convert directly to Atlas, complemented by full cargo looting. In other news from the event, the team highlighted the positive reception to scanning, revealing that upcoming iterations will introduce three distinct scanning charge recipes mapped to six scanning patterns, creating tiered risk-and-reward opportunities. In response to feedback from Armanovich regarding crafting and safe zones, Michael clarified that safe zones are designed to protect against enemy factions rather than eliminate all low-level PvE danger, while also confirming that complex crafting requirements are being re-tuned to make mid-tier crafting far more accessible. Claim stakes also took center stage, with John sharing exciting quality-of-life updates aimed at making territory control more approachable. To remove early friction, tier-one claim stakes will soon be deployable directly from central space stations without overwhelming logistical hurdles. Even better for prospective land barons, claim stake fuel requirements are seeing a massive one-thousand-fold reduction, establishing a comfortable fourteen-day maintenance window so players can focus on territorial strategy and infrastructure rather than constant micromanagement. Wrapping up the session, the team emphasized that these sweeping adjustments to XP curves, economic balance, and crafting will likely warrant a fresh PTR database reset in the near future to thoroughly test the improved onboarding experience. For the community, the immediate call to action is to head over to the DAO forums to debate PIP-36 before voting wraps up, hop into the PTR to test the evolving claim stake mechanics, and keep the feedback flowing in Discord. The universe of Star Atlas is coming together brick by brick, and player input remains the compass guiding its course.

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Star Atlas Event Transcript

GM GM GM GM GM GM. How is everyone doing today? Victorious Crash, Tango, Mike, Mr.

Swagner. >> Good morning, Tango. How is everyone doing in this blessed day?

We have lot to go through today, guys. And today we are going to require you guys to be on your toes. You need to use 110% of your brain today because we are going to talk about the heart of the C4 experience.

We’re going to talk about game design, the vision, the features, the mechanics, the code, and everything else that makes game super cool and exciting. And of course, we need you guys feedback because you guys are the heart of Staratus, the heart of the community, and in the best position to let us know what’s good, what’s bad, and what can be epic. Jim Jindo Jimian Cifworth Emperor, NDR, all legends here today.

Good, good, good. Let’s invite John upstage. John GM, my friend.

>> GM, hi. How’s it going? >> All good.

All good.

So, have lot to cover today. have lot to cover today. And what I’m going to do is invite right away Emperor and anyone else from the DA who wants to come up stage.

JM Emperor, how are you doing, my friend? >> Morning.

Good morning. >> Doing well. How are you >> doing?

Fantastic.

So, Emperor, you have updates for us. Uh, we have pretty packet, bro.

But don’t worry too much. if it is necessary, we can extend little bit.

But the floor is yours, friend. Let’s get this show on the road. >> Yeah, perfect.

Thank you for having me today. Um, we’re here um in little bit of different capacity. Um, we are um uh proposing our own PIP.

We’re here to shill it.

So, um, we wanted to go over PIP 36, which is the Star Atlas DAO Council dashboard. Um, know [clears throat] there’s been lot of chatter in the DAO chat and things like that and with the, uh, the PIP ideas that was floating around the last few days.

But um we the DAO uh the DAO council is we are proposing um to send out an RFP request for proposal um to create dashboard.

So um this has been long time coming. had it um in PIP ideas. think it was in 2025 at some point.

But um we finally had the bandwidth.

You know, everything’s kind of slowed down little bit as everyone knows.

So, we decided it was time to create our own proposal. And so what we’re doing is trying to um put out an RFP, like said, for people to um propose a document um to create our dashboard.

So, um don’t want to get into too many of the details, but to get right into it, we’re um this dashboard. Um we’ll have uh where is it?

So, I’m sharing my screen.

So, we’ll have mandatory dashboard features and deliverables, um proposal, submission requirements, blah blah blah. Let’s see if this switches over.

Okay, so this is the actual RFP for the dashboard.

So, um, we’re accepting proposals to develop and sustain public Star Atlas Council dashboard per our dashboard PIP. Um, you have 14 days if people are interested in submitting. um if it passes.

So think we have um right here 9 days 5 hours and 54 minutes remaining.

So, little over week and we’re um proposing that um so in the RFP there’s qualifications [snorts] um development experience, examples of previous projects, links and demonstrations and supporting materials.

So basically we’re asking people to create us a dashboard. Um the current council and the upcoming one also does not have the technical requirements or the technical prowish prowess should say to create dashboard.

So we need people um that are versed in that stuff.

So um so um some of this stuff is is um technical but basically we are wanting people to create it and then the council will own it.

So, um we we [clears throat] have a GitHub um that um we can you know transfer the files to um our GitHub um help us troubleshoot it.

And then um the important thing is the mandatory minimal viable product features include um optional oh where is it at mandatory MVP.

So, we have our own um uh [clears throat] um uh sheets, Google Sheets that we have accomplishments and all of the things on there.

And then so um we want it to display the accomplishments, the atlas paid, pips, completing voting, total number of votes, all the things. Again, don’t want to bore people with the with the stuff, but um we want payment tracker.

So, think this is something that people have requested in the past specifically when we were talking about paying the council. don’t remember when that was, but it was it was while back. Um people were requesting like basically balance sheet.

So, this um dashboard would have essentially a balance sheet.

So, um, between the balance sheet, you know, the payment tracker, um, then some of the stuff in our Google Sheets, um, this one’s easy, the ecosystem fund limit. We always have to do the, um, calculation every quarter when there’s enough in the, um, in the DAO uh, fund and then the the DAO balance sheet.

So, yeah. Um, so the Dow Treasury, the ecosystem fund, and then one of the things that people don’t necessarily have access to is our multi-IG wallet.

So for those that don’t know, um, whenever PIP is passed, um, the the the DAO actually transfers those funds to council controlled multi-IG that also has the team on it. Um, and so think it would be important for people to be able to to know what those multi-ill multi-IG wallets are and where the payments are going.

So um that’s that’s the uh the the really basic part of what we’re asking for um in this um dashboard.

But my hope is this desired non MVP features um we would love if somebody stepped up um if it passes and created some of these other um uh items on there.

So like yes votes, no votes, no votes, abstains, start date, end date, and some of that stuff.

So um the other thing is kind of the Dow Treasury history. um potentially embed or integrate Ryden’s DAO Treasury history page. Um shout out to to Ryden.

Thank you so much. don’t think he’s here. don’t know if he’s here.

can’t multitask, but um you know, it’s entirely possible that somebody can integrate some of the the work that Ryden has already done. Um but yeah, you can propose um additional features beyond those listed above. Um then there’s bunch of other technical stuff.

Um and for those interested in the actual process of how we’re going to pick by weing the council.

So um it ends in 9 days like said and um after it ends assuming it passes there will be 2 week submission period um where people can can put in their RFP um and they’ll be evaluated by the DAO council members.

So we have exactly two meetings left in sack 3. Um so the rubric we’ll be using is you know each of the individual five council members will score all of these on one to five.

So the total cost the qualifications experience and past products ease of transfer and continued sustainment and then timeline to completion.

So the council will take into consideration all of those based on the RFP and then we will score it and then the highest combined scores will be selected. Um so after we um select the winning proposal then um we’ll announce the the winner then the developer will begin um building it and then um yeah they’ll transfer all the files and documents over to us um so we can put it on our our GitHub. Um, and yeah, that’s kind of the the quick and dirty of the RFP.

And um, uh, we do have domain. Um, it’s yet to be known if we’re going to use our domain or if, um, we can have it under the, uh, like my picture. And I’m don’t want to put swags on the spot, but um, it would be really nice if it could be council.

staratlas. com, staratlas. com, but that’s yet to be worked out.

But bare minimum it’ll be um staratlasdowccounsel. com. We do own that domain.

If we use that domain, we’ll have to figure out hosting. Um whereas if we can put it under the autonom umbrella, um we wouldn’t have to pay for that hosting stuff. >> don’t want to cut you.

>> don’t want to interrupt you here, Emperor, but just Yeah, just to comment on that. we could solve it right here on the spot. mean, my strong preference is to have Star Atlas subdomain and we’ll we’ll provide the hosting [clears throat] for you guys.

So, no problem on that one. And we can accommodate the council. star.

com. >> would love that. That sounds great.

So, um that’s kind of the quick and dirty. don’t know if don’t think there’s been any comments or questions. Um guess Ether has is there link where people can discuss or debate?

Yeah.

Hey JT, can you put that voting at um created that voting thread?

we can post that in here. Um thank you. Um yeah, know there’s been some chatter, you know, things are tight right now as we all know.

Um, this would come out of the ecosystem fund and we did specifically um, we did not put USD value on this. Um, but it is the, uh, 5% of the ecosystem fund and that’s basically it’s like 1,800 bucks.

So, um, if if we can find somebody to create this for the 14 or 19 million Atlas, um, and you know what, God’s honest truth, if somebody wants to create it for free or for like 5 million Atlas, we would absolutely be open to that.

So, there’s nothing in the RFP that says people can’t do it for less, you know. Um, so know there’s lot of chatter um saying that we can, you know, somebody could create this with AI in day. That would be awesome.

can’t do it. JIT can’t do it. Um, but if somebody wants to reply to this RFP, assuming it passes, um, and do it for less and provide us more information, we would absolutely love that.

But personally think it’s it’s important to have this information available.

So like um there has been the um some chatter in the ideas channel of um some of this stuff and um just lost my train of thought. Um if if people don’t want to pay for it, if they don’t see the value, that’s okay. Um if somebody wants to create it for free, cool, do that.

that would be more than happy or we would be more than happy to to have that. Um, but like said, kind of alluded to earlier. Um, I think people people sit here and ask for information on what is the council doing and um, oh, that’s where it’s going.

So, there there’s questions on where where was this and that decision made? Um, well, if there was dashboard, it’d be one-stop shop.

you know, people don’t have to dig through announcements, they don’t have to dig through reports, they don’t even have to watch the council meetings.

So, if people have questions on stuff, um, this would provide them the opportunity to just click on link and go look it up for themselves.

So personally find it um really um really valuable um for transparency and that’s that’s probably the biggest thing like under motivate motivation. Um transparency is really important and know there’s some people that that say we don’t need this right now. Um guess my take as as kind of the author of it is let’s build it now before we need it.

For me, it’s it’s why wait till the last minute until it’s actually wanted and needed. Especially if somebody were to like even just the pay pay the council pit thing. Um if somebody were to bring that up again, know there’s going to be questions because there has been in the past.

Um this would be really easy go-to click. Oh, okay.

That’s what the council has been doing.

This is the balance sheet, all the things.

So, that’s kind of the that’s the one of the bigger um motivations for doing this.

So, um yes. Are we little tight? Sure.

Um we do have um like 34 or 42, can’t remember. I’m sorry, I’m kind of dyslexic sometimes, but we do have money in the ecosystem fund. And I’m not saying we need to burn through the ecosystem fund.

Um, but this, in my opinion, and our opinion as council, could be really good way to um to use those funds to to further the DAO.

So, see I’m 17 minutes into the meeting already, and Jose, you said you had a packed schedule. Um, but I’d be more than happy to to answer questions um if anybody happened to have some, but also don’t want to take bunch of your time. >> No worries, my friend.

uh we share the the thread on this pip discussion should take place in the chat.

So guys if you have any questions for emperor gif blade or just send those questions there. think this is very valid discussion and would love to see community involvement on this topic for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And um Swags, don’t know if you wanted to go into little bit of the clarification for like two minutes on what the role of the council is or if we just want kind of want to save that for another time. >> Sure.

Yeah, can. mean, the role of the council is really to serve as shepherds for those PIPS that are eligible to be uh submitted by community. And think the overarching question here is really this idea of actionable versus inactionable or non-actionable pips.

Um simply put, it’s pretty restricted right at the moment. And um if give you guys the bigger picture, it’s uh just to clarify again that [clears throat] uh the DAO is continually evolving and maturing entity uh for which Automata provides and delegates authority to over time.

Now, that authority is pretty limited. Um, as [clears throat] of today, the only proposals that are really eligible to go to vote at all are PIPs that are related to fund funding requests from the eco uh ecosystem fund specifically. Anything beyond that is immediately labeled as ineligible or non-actionable.

Now, that’s not to say that we can’t make exceptions to that, and we have made exceptions to that. Uh but generally speaking, it’s just going to be immediately labeled as non-actionable.

Now, some of the exceptions and [clears throat] and I’ve been chatting with uh SAC 3 about this, but some of the ex exceptions have been uh things like the uh uh update to PIT 4, for example.

Now, these are like procedural or policy changes, clarifications. Um we worked pretty extensively handinand with the council as that was being drafted to make sure that it satisfied our requirements. um uh before allowing that to go to vote.

Um you know, not to put anybody on the spot, but uh Jose had his uh proposal for the salary for 6 months.

Now, that definitely would be non-actionable. Um however, from sentiment standpoint, it seemed to have quite lot of support from the community. Uh we approved that one to move forward.

Now, it still had to go through the voting process and and it did get approved, but um uh anyway, probably already spending more time on this than we should, but guess the cleanest clarification is that the only eligible PIPS today uh that can be passed through by the council and the council’s shephering of proposals, assisting people with drafting them and filling out ideas and conforming to the format that needs to be uh provided for any proposal is uh is uh funding requests through the ecosystem fund specifically. >> Perfect. Thank you, Swags.

That’s uh that’s that’s what and the council wanted and needed from you.

So, um it’s out there.

It’s on the record yet once again that the council only has say over the ecosystem funds.

So, we don’t need to to belabor this point anymore.

So, thank you Swags for clarifying that.

So, think I’m done. Jose, >> thank you, Emperor, my friend. >> Yeah, just just dubtailing on that one additional final comment is like certainly we want to see um the purpose and function of the DAO expand over time and community participation, things like making proposals surrounding game development or economic design um and ultimately taking ownership of the Star Alice IP.

Those are all things we want to see. We need to make sure it happens in way that is um kind of meets our objectives from Automata. >> Without further ado, >> it’s yours, Jose.

>> Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Emperor.

So, yeah, guys, uh time for us to move to the main topic of today. and Michael and John feel free to interrupt me and jump in whenever you guys want because this is big one.

But I’ll preface today’s topic on talking about on introducing what we have been up so far very very launched few weeks ago and we have been grinding non-stop. Phase one and phase two were all about bug fixing, preparing the game to have the features, the the building blocks that we wanted to have in terms of giving us capabilities and framework upon which we could build the game that we wanted to play on. This was the main focus of all our efforts up to now.

We had the AOG design of where we wanted to be and we built the features that would take us there.

So we created the council rank system. We create the LP system. We create the nemesis engine.

We created the crew PDAs that would allow us to have unique crew in the future. We built ton of stuff which you guys can see now working properly for the most part. think there are still some very few bugs honestly at this point.

Um, we are pretty much done in terms of big features production for this stage of C4 PTR and we had prepared the terrain for phase three. Phase three, uh, focus changes from testing features to actually making the features um, interesting and cool game overall.

That’s the objective of phase 3 is using the building blocks that we have so carefully built during the first stages of the PTR and make those into game.

So, if we had the building blocks, now is the time to get them together. Uh, study how they connect, uh, balance how they should work, add weights, uh, train excesses, add punctual stuff that needs to be developed for the different game plays loops to exist. And that’s what we are going to do now.

That’s what we are doing now. And that’s the main focus of today. We want to hear from you guys.

What are your thoughts, uh your feedback, your impressions on the phase three current stage in terms of game design? What kind of features you guys are enjoining doing? What kind of features you guys feel should have more work on?

How guys feel about the on boarding of the game? how you guys feel about the specific gameplay loops like claim stakes uh council rank the progression.

Yes, we need to tag one, two, three. Let me find him. [laughter] This is this would be his brew.

It would be fun to have him here in the discussions.

So yeah guys, pretty much everything that’s related to the game enjoyment, the how the game works, the systems, the logics, the progression rate, everything is fair ground and is up for discussion today here on this brew. In terms of strategy right now, uh, our main focus right now, Michael and John can correct me if I’m wrong here, is the council rank system and its UI. The cancel rank council rank system pretty much governs the whole experience of C4PR.

It gates features. It tells you how efficient you are in performing pretty much every gameplay decision in game. Every gameplay loop, everything is controlled by the the council rank system.

Um uh the licenses uh system allows you to start using your assets or gate assets from your use.

So that would be uh where wanted to start this conversation and Michael and John if you guys want to give us uh your feedback. see people already giving some thoughts. Gnar is saying that the speed and balance feels lot better now than before.

This is one of the things that I’m especially concerned and would love to discuss today.

So if anyone wants to add to the guest comments right now, that’s very good point to get us started today. >> Um I can can perhaps jump in with just an immediate comment. Um I’m trying to think how to frame this.

think you gave great description of what the intention of council rank is. Uh, and we as team kind of had this conversation yesterday specifically discussing, you know, the the controversial topic of pilot license XP and unlocking larger classes of ships and how that gates players out of assets that they own and and there are some genuine uh competing interests here because from one perspective, Council Rank is is intended to genuinely give players sense of accomplishment for going through it. And if if progression is too easy and too quick, you cap out your character very rapidly.

Um then you lose this major element of gameplay um and the fun of achieving that accomplishment in the first place. Um and and kind of secondary to that is that uh progressing through council rank should give you various advantages in the game.

you know, if you if you play more um if you select better strategy on how you allocate your points, uh it can give you competitive edge in the game. And so, if everybody just has everything, then it comes right back down to well, who owns the most of who owns the most assets? um and kind of a much wider topic around uh pay to win within the game which of course there are some elements of pay to win and Star Atlas because you know the the power of your fleet is determined by how much money you’ve spent and how many assets you own.

Uh but we can curtail that to an extent through things like council rank and and that is by design.

Now, on the other on the other side of that, you know, if if the experience is too slow, um or if players that don’t spend lot of money aren’t able to experience the breadth of the game, then we’re not doing great job. We’re not going to attract new users, or if we do, we’re not going to retain those users because the game will feel boring.

So, to your point, think again, you kind of outlined what our objectives were for FA through phase one, phase two, and now entering into phase three. big part of what we’re uh working on today is that economic tune uh economic economic tuning and game balance. Um and so think we’ve done you know good job of replacing some of the placeholder values and getting an initial implementation out there.

Obviously we’ve gotten lot of feedback from the community on that uh just over the last you know week or two. Um, and think we’re all in alignment from the team side as well as, you know, what we’ve seen from the community that we we still need to make few adjustments and and that’s really the big purpose of what we’re going to be focusing on over the course of this phase three is um not only replacing a lot of uh placeholder values that still exist, but also making some uh finer tuning adjustments to those values that we first implemented. And so, uh, won’t get into specifics in case John wants to, uh, provide his comments here as well, but we can, you know, we can come back to some of the things that we’ve that we’re going to be doing on the XP curve, on XP earning.

Um, and then, uh, really big topic around council rank unlocks and the benefits that you get through unlocking various nodes or researching those nodes. >> Yeah. Um, so don’t don’t want to go into like the details of the unlocks, but do want to say that I’m working on um refresh for the UI of the council rank system.

And um have it uh on my dev branch here.

So I’m just going to paste picture of it. And you’ll just have to excuse if there’s things that are obviously wrong.

But what you’ll notice right away is that each of the research nodes that we have planned for future branches are available.

So you’ll see that freight repair and salvage are there and they’re just there so that we know that we plan to build those one day.

But now instead of being hidden because they’re unbuilt, they’re exposed and they say un unfinished, right?

So you click on that and there’s nothing there and it tells you there’s nothing there. when we go to mainet and launch it things that are unfinished will not be in the UI.

So I’ll just start by saying that but um I’ve selected the hull integrity module and down the right hand side you can now see what the prerequisites are what the unlock path is for this module and how much cost it has what what time it has what what like you can go back to survivability because that’s what you needed to get here.

you can go forward to the next hall integrity um upgrade to see what it involves and what it costs and all that.

So big big changes to the council rank UI uh to allow people to spend their points that they’re getting in the PTR like in within with information. We want informed spending. We want you to be able to see, oh, this is dead end.

shouldn’t put anything in it. or oh this is new feature that’s just come online and it’s now moved from unavailable to in development and it’s highlighted as such and now you can start putting points into it.

So um yeah when the benefits of whole integrity are going to be listed there if there are some so currently there I don’t think there is anything written about what hull integrity does and those bigger discussions are happening behind the scenes what does hull integrity mean you know how is it going to be applied and as soon as that information is available it will be in this interface Um just just to kind of complement what you’re um talking about there also, you know, big part of the work that you’re demoing right now is this UI pass and UX pass and quality of life pass that that Danny’s also working on.

So yes, we’re very aware that council rank right now is not very informative or intuitive. Um, and so ensuring that all of the necessary information to make strategic decisions is available in there as part of uh the work that we’re doing over phase three. Yep.

And here’s one that’s finished and it does show you what it does exactly. It adds ship capacity points by plus 7. It opens the next step in the research path and it tells you what that next step is.

So those are >> yeah those are built.

So yeah this way [laughter] >> uh yeah this is the way John so yeah guys we have this let’s say two front approach right now we are building the UI and we are adding the definitions uh he working the progression feeling how everything connects together one another and this will be pretty much the heavy lifting of phase So for example, it would allow us to change how the pilot career works. Uh how do we perceive the piloting skill or council rank node to function in the status game?

So this would be something that requires balancing, but most of all requires us thinking about how the player experience through each of the nodes should be and even maybe removing some nodes, adding extra nodes, and overall creating your progression in the game.

It’s pretty much heavy lifting game design work at this point. see people making some comments. I just want to jump in and and respond to uh Zap with the combat loot.

I totally agree with you. think our loot tables right now need uh need lot of adjustments. there should be better loot um uh both through like the data running scanning lube uh as well as as combat which you receive from any PvE kills.

I’m I’m not sure that everyone is fully aware of this. made comment yesterday in the PTR chat, but um the economic incentives and rewards are split between PvE and PvP. Um, with with PvE, uh, you know, obviously you’re getting XP for any of this, so let’s ignore that for the moment.

But, um, with PVE, you’re receiving LP, so loyalty points that will, um, obviously enable you to receive your proportional share of the fixed daily emissions in that LP pool.

That’s essentially concept carried over from starbased where you know obviously the the way you earn LP in starbased is was by upgrading star bases or contributing um uh food and toolkits to star bases and that’s how you earned LP and you got your fixed daily epoch share of that. Um that LP will exist still for star base upgrading in C4 but from combat perspective you’re getting it by um attacking any PVE enemies.

So that should be ships as well as uh star bases if you’re attacking star bases. Uh in addition to that, there’s supposed to be loot table associated with any of the uh or with with the enemy fleet that you destroy.

Some RNG based loot distribution. Uh and that could be item components, it could be configs, you know, varying uh randomized loot that you receive. Uh so that that’s essentially it.

you get LP that helps you get atlas emissions and then you get some loot from the enemy fleet you destroy. Uh in PvP, uh we’ve introduced the medallion concept and the amount of medallions you receive again is depends on um the scale and class of the enemy fleet that you destroy should you win that engagement. Um so you’ll get medallions, you have to pick those up, they sit in your cargo um and then you potentially become target.

You have to extract with those, deposit those to star base, and then you’ll be able to sell the medallions on the marketplace at fixed rate. One medallion equals one atlas. Uh, in addition to that, you should also be getting RNG based loot drop from uh from PvP engagement.

However, the loot that you receive is driven and determined by the configuration of the fleet of that enemy character fleet as opposed to being completely random.

And then um the only additional component in PvP is if that uh enemy has items in their cargo, they also drop all of those items and you can loot those.

So if they’re flying around, if they’ve killed bunch of players and they have bunch of medallions in their cargo, not only would you get the medallions from killing them in the first place, uh you could you could steal essentially all of the medallions that are in their cargo.

But kind of longer explanation to the the statement that combat should uh drop loot similar to scanning. Uh but but yes, Sap, agree with you on that. And think we need some more adjustments on how loot is uh determinant dropped.

>> think that’s very good vision for combat. Um maybe we can move on to perhaps another gameplay loop. Uh one gameplay loop that have been receiving good feedback is scanning overall.

And would love to hear comments in the chat about scanning in terms of mechanics in terms of game design. If you guys feel the progression and the gameplay experience of scanning is good, good enough at least for release. Chap loves the scanning.

Rate the loot.

Okay, we can bump the looting. Much more engaging.

Nice.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing that we want.

Yes, think scanning is good example of the kind of experience that we are looking forward in terms of general gameplay experience across pretty much every feature uh in Star Atlas every gameplay loop end to end. Uh the other scanning patterns didn’t go live yet. They should be going live soon then.

>> Uh yeah, did see that the um some of the new skating patterns might not might not be hooked up, but uh that should be pretty pretty easy to do. >> Yeah. And the idea, John, you can correct me, you are closer to the scanning gameplay loop than am, but the idea is that different scanning patterns will have different loot tables or different looting opportunities.

Is that it? >> Um, >> can comment on that. >> Yeah, go ahead, please.

>> Yeah, that is the idea. >> Yeah.

So the kind of the final intended mainet version um and there’s few pieces we still need to build here but is that uh you’ll be using scanning charges instead of toolkits.

So that’s one item that we need to replace. Um there um where we’ve roughly landed is that there’s going to be three different scanning charge recipes and therefore three different scanning charge types. Each one of those recipes will unlock two of the scanning patterns.

There’s six patterns. And so, um, within the patterns, uh, and depending on the scanning charge recipe that you’re using, some of them are going to be easier to craft and cheaper to craft and result in, call it lower quality loot. Uh, so that might just be the basic resources, which think is what people are receiving right now.

Some of them are going to be much more difficult to craft and, uh, those would result in much better loot.

So, yeah, it’s it’s kind of a scaled individual loot table. um per grouping of pattern that you can scan for and um better loot depending on kind of the resource input requirements of crafting these scanning charges.

Good.

Yeah, this is this is super interesting. really want it makes like scanning proper career which has its own perks, own items, own mechanics and think this is general principle right Michael that we can extrapolate for everything in the game. We as principle we want to make every game play loop like combat like canning like trading have their own let’s say items and features and objectives separately.

Of course they complement the whole of the game but they also have unique things that are associated with them right? >> Yes absolutely. Pretty cool.

Uh, another thing that would love to to discuss here today and this is one of the big conversations we were having internally and think it would be really interesting to have the community feedback is on the on boarding exper experience right now. how you guys are feeling about let’s say the first hour of the game coming to say C4 PTR you get to the game you get started how you guys are feeling about the on boarding experience if you guys feel like the friction is good enough or we need to remove more friction see lot of people shedding this is very long wait it’s too So I think that we’re all aware that the onboarding part needs work and think that we’re at the point where we can begin to work on it. Uh we have lots of like we have we have very good foundation to work from.

And so I’m not surprised that lot of the feedback is oh it takes too long to get into this or too too long to get into that.

Now we’re ready to start tackling those tasks. And um you know I played lot this weekend and one thing for example noticed was like it was taking long time to get pilot XP. Um it’s extremely easy to dial in those first few minutes once you know that the rest of the time frame time frame makes sense.

Um, and so the way I’m looking at it is like we have all these tools, we have all these pieces at our disposal, and uh, want to bring my extra small ship in, and want to, you know, get my first mining task done by deploying my fleet somewhere. And when arrive back from that, you know, from that mining task, I’ve hit level one pilot. I’ve hit level one mining, and I’ve, you know, and have the resources in my cargo hold to hit level one crafting as well, right?

Um, and then once you have that process in place, you just expand it out. And um, it becomes pretty easy to to uh get it to work with the the bigger vision that Chris left us with, which is to have, you know, months and months or even years of progression. uh we just have to fine-tune the first few minutes and make the experience, you know, make sense, get first few levels that make sense, tie those into the council rank and progression overall, and then tie that to the bigger goals of territory control.

And so, yeah, I’m I’m excited to to be working on that now.

It’s it’s uh it’s lot of fun to get in and and work on that stuff. And know that it’s painful at the moment and it’s just for couple days while we align on how to go forward with those things and then we’ll be like, you know, working on the the the game opener and then the bigger game loops and it’s going to feel pretty good really soon. >> did did add some comments on that this morning just with respect to the XP curve and um I’m pretty much fully agree uh the early game is bit too challenging.

Um, and want to back this up with another statement, but effectively what we’re doing is kind of steepening uh the curve and making it bit more parabolic. um we want to maintain the target long-term um max level objectives which uh it don’t know it’s kind it’s kind of leak of information but effectively player that is maxing out their XP every single day at the maximum rate that that rolling XP soft cap um can reach max level under the current council rank configuration within 6 months. Um, but on average when we look at player portfolios of assets, it should take roughly year.

Um, now that’s going to be also modified by by the fact that there’s going to be carryover balance of star-based XP into player accounts.

So, if you’ve been long-term player already of Starbased, you’re probably going to knock out something like 3 months of leveling requirements.

That’s really good for our existing players and helps them kind of bootstrap and get head start.

not necessarily great for any new players.

So, we really need to be accommodating to the new players and what their experience is because if it’s terrible for them, we won’t grow. Um, and so, back to my point on steepening the curve is we’re just going to adjust the early stage requirements so they’re significantly lower. Oh, within few hours of gameplay, you’re going to be getting your first levels on on [clears throat] across all of the licenses.

Um, and and really over the first like three to five levels of those licenses, you’ll probably be able to achieve that within something like seven to 10 days. From there, it starts to get progressively more difficult and take significantly more time. And so, um, uh, backing into that other comment wanted to make, what is really critical to me is that, and I’ve seen, uh, the comments from the community, and again, fully agree with, all uh, game loops should be accessible to all players right at the start.

You shouldn’t have to go do something that you don’t want to do and grind it just to be able to uh, just to be able to like play the one loop that you want to play.

So, some basic access to every single game loop should be available to all players from the start and part of this adjustment that we’re going to be making to XP curves will help accommodate that. Um, and then just since see the comment very recently and it’s it’s kind of um in line with what I’m talking about right now, Armanovich um uh we have it documented again agree with you complex crafting.

There’s two pieces to this. Uh, one is making uh reducing the requirements to access complex crafting.

So, it’s not so it’s like midame right now and it probably needs to be bit more early game. Um, so that’s one adjustment we can make. The second though is how we categorize recipes.

Not every recipe outside of our four needs to be complex crafting recipe. Um, so we we we can recategorize those, make make more recipes craftable. Um, they’ll still be difficult to craft because in lot of cases you’re going to need to expand into the MRZ in order to get access to the resources to even craft the things.

Uh, but at least it’ll be possible when you do get into MRZ. And so those are the two sides uh that we’re that we’re looking into on complex crafting and we will make some adjustments there. Absolutely.

Um, Erther is asking, can we talk about claim claims deployment? John, maybe this is good segue for us to talk little bit about claim stakes. >> Yeah, for sure.

Um, this is still very much work in progress. Uh, and I’ve been pulled pulled away from it momentarily to figure out why the Nemesis engine was leaving all the fleets in mud space. think fixed that.

And then also to work on council rank.

But um, you can see this thing coming together. Um, the idea here is the user interface allows you to see what claim stakes you have from the CSS, see what planets are eligible for you to put them on, and if it’s outside of the, you know, of the region that you’re standing in, uh, it allows you to see if you have fleet that’s available to carry the claim steak there. That includes carrying the crew, uh, keeping fuel on hand to to initially build the flame stake and and fuel it and number of days of fuel on hand.

Um, yeah, so crew, the the the fuel and then um there’s link to the fleet configurator. The these things are all there to just surface surface the pain points that people have in in the existing um game system.

Okay. Uh, further to this, we’ve also decided we’re going to make um, like Michael was just saying, like tier one claim stake should be usable right from day one. And so, whatever we need to change to make that part happen um, we are going to do.

And so the complexities of claim stake management and fees and all of that is still available and coming and you you’ll still be able to move claim stakes to other locations with your ships. Uh but we’ll have some version of of tier one claim stake that can be done right from day one at the central space station and um it won’t have so many steps to it.

So, don’t know exact like this is like right in the middle of being built.

So, don’t know if can give too many specifics about it, but um figured it’s better to just like be shipping it as I’m building it, recognizing that each piece is hopefully an improvement over the existing blackbox. Um, and then as we as we like lay this thing out and look at it, we might go hm um don’t like that have to, you know, don’t like that have to go to the planet to actually put, you know, atlas in that claims. want to be able to do that from right here or something like that, right?

And we can make those changes as we go. The the whole the whole process isn’t set in stone yet. Um, but certainly we want to bring the process to the forefront of the UI, get people placing claim stakes.

We want to get, but what really want to see is territory flipping with claim stakes and see how people feel about their claims being destroyed when star base is destroyed. Do we want to try something else? Do we want to try something with the democracy module where you take over star base and now you can demand tribute from those claim stakes rather than have them evicted right away.

This would mean you don’t have to like rebuild your infrastructure on top of theirs. You don’t have to destroy them.

You can literally say, “I’m now the owner of this system and want to want cut of what you’re making. ” And that’s a little less disruptive. Anyway, just there’s lot of options that we have there.

Um, the first step is to get more people using claim stakes and that’s what this interface does. Just lowers the barrier to entry for our play testers. Let’s get them out there.

Let’s start taking territory and see what it feels like to, you know, lose everything that you’ve put into it or, you know, try try something else. >> Yeah.

No, think this is very interesting approach. Uh, claim stakes is the heart of the >> we burn it all down. >> We do.

Yeah, we’re we’re going to because we need the resource destruction throughout the game. Um, so like that that part don’t want to change. Uh, but that’s kind of separate topic from claim state functionality in the first place.

>> Uh, John, people are ask can we really test claim stakes? Any rough ideas? >> You can test them right now if you can figure them out.

like they they should function, right? Um so so Jose, you’re working through um some bugs in how rent works.

Okay. Um >> so that’s that’s process, right? And rent rent should be working, but there’s this underlying concept of like rent rates changing.

And currently the program doesn’t support rent rates changing the way that we’d like it to.

So Jose’s rebuilding that, but uh yeah, you can you can put claim stake into your fleet, fly it somewhere, and then bring crew Atlas and fuel to that claim steak and you should be able to deploy it and um you know, fill it up, fill it up with fuel, have it producing resources for you. Um, yeah, but to get to that point.

So, so on that route, like it side tangent to all this is that my current game play is fully focused on placing claim stake and can’t get it there because can’t make my fleet size big enough to support crew to transport them to the thing.

So, I’m aware that getting there requires lot of lot of work and lot of pieces. Um, and until I’ve actually placed claim stake, I’m I’m I’m not going to be convinced that it >> You’re not going to rest. >> I’m [laughter] not going to rest.

But but yeah, the the game loop does work as far as know. Um, just haven’t got there yet myself.

But the changes to the council rank are helping me understand what need to get. And the changes that Michael’s making to XP curves are going to help my piloting expeditions um, level up faster. get that extra crew room that need and then move the people to the location with the claim steak and actually get it going.

So, very much we I’m I’m looking at claim stakes as as later game thing, but recognizing that the dependency on resource production is there and that that dependency used to come from the fact that our ships could all just mine whatever they wanted. And so we’re very carefully looking at the tier one claim stakes and how they provide resources for new players and coupling that with like fleet ownership, right? You come in, you buy fleet, you either accept that you’re going to be buying your resources and taking part in some other loop like scanning or combat, or you’re going to buy claim stick to go along with it and be self-sufficient in that respect from, you know, right from the get-go.

And so that’s that’s how I’m looking at building that out. Anyway, >> people asking for the code. The code for today’s fun.

>> thought they were looking for the source code for claim stakes. was like, “Oh man, here we go. >> Here we go.

” Um, guys, we have few minutes and lots of questions.

So maybe someone wants to ask few random questions so Michael John and can answer them real quick. Reset coming soon then.

Yes, we will probably need the reset to test the new features that we are building right now. The curves, XP curves, recipes. Recipe is another point that we need to tackle.

Sorry. Go on, Michael. I just the conditional uh not maybe not necessarily soon like do think another reset will be necessary when we get the council rank changes and the XP curve adjustments.

Um also doing little bit of research into mining rates and resource burns for fleets. Uh but yeah, you know, there’s some overarching econ economic adjustments that we’re making here and when we get them in, then yeah, think uh reset will be warranted. just don’t don’t necessarily want to say soon.

>> Mhm. >> Could be. Could be.

Just we know these things take time and specifically the you know the big conversation we had about council rank yesterday.

That’s pretty deep rabbit hole for us to sort through.

Yes, lot of things to work on. >> Yeah.

So, there’s talking about see pseudo saying that resource production for claim stakes needs to be higher. Like the fuel input is going to be super low like compared [clears throat] to what it is now. I actually thought that had changed it but maybe that hasn’t gone out yet.

But there’s a,000x reduction in fuel input cost coming to claim stakes at the moment. And that’ll allow them to be profitable. They won’t be these like fuel vacuums that just spit nothing out after burning all your fuel sort of thing.

So I’ve targeted 14-day sort of um fuel window where you like if you fill it full of fuel, you’ve got 14 days. And that’s that’s literally just starting point. The reason I’ve done that is so that we can focus on um defending claim stakes and building buildings and moving resources to and from them rather than having to sit there and go, “Oh, shoot.

I’m out of fuel again. ” Uh right, you fill it up, it’s full of fuel, it runs for two weeks or whatever. The fuel cost exists.

Um it’s it’s part of resource burn and maintenance and everything and uh but for now anyway it’s not going to be major major factor in in resource production. You should notice that the the resource you’re getting from the claim sticks makes lot of sense and feels good. >> just want to respond to Armanovich again.

Um, from my perspective and the way we’ve been treating the safe zone is not that it that there’s no combat whatsoever and it’s complete safe harbor, uh, but rather that it is safe harbor from enemy players or enemy factions. Um, actually think it’s really appropriate to have some low-level combat immediately available to players. And in fact, this kind of um is supported by my point that all gameplay loops should be accessible to all players essentially at the right at the start.

And so if if we forced um Nemesis Engine to exist only in MRZ, where you’re also exposed to PvP, um then we eliminate that combat gameplay loop from players. And you know, if you if you think about like any MMO starter zone, you’re immediately going out and just killing some low-level NPC, you know, bunnies or trolls or whatever it is. And so, um, again, just it’s think it’s better to contextualize safe zone as safe from enemy factions, not necessarily complete safe harbor from all forms of attack or combat.

Guys are already on top of on top of the hour. Last questions for Michael, myself, and John before we close today’s brew because we have lot to discuss internally. >> Yeah.

Um, just because see the discussion ongoing.

Yeah. mean if if there are major changes that need to be made after mainet release like hopefully that’s not the case obviously that’s why we’re spending the time that we are in PTR but of course these things can be discovered uh after mainet and when we get more players in the game uh more things get identified uh there’s there’s two paths one is if we can make any configuration changes without changing the game program itself we will do that um that could result in you know reverting XP or changing player levels or undoing some things that you know weren’t that are were unintended consequences. Um uh the other route which is far less desirable is if if there is you know major program change program redeployment it would effectively be the same process that we’re going through now which it which is wipe of characters and reset of the game.

uh with the one caveat to that being that we’ll have options to snapshot uh player accounts and we can initialize the program with um with any you know accelerated or or retained uh progress for example in fact this is the process that we’ll use when we’re initializing player accounts um with the bootstrapped XP carryover from starbased so we have opt ions. They’re not all super clean um or easy, and some are definitely less desirable than others, but you know, we’ll we’ll be able to solve it if we encounter um problems in the future. >> Thank you, Michael.

Um think this is good point to close today’s brew. Thank you guys for joining us today. This was very helpful from at least for us on the team side.

Seeing your comments, your feedback guys really help us out and opens the path for better game design from us. hope we also have managed to clarify our vision and some of the efforts that are going on on phase three.

It’s going to be lot of work, but it’s shaping up nicely.

That’s what we can say like we see every day we are progressing every day the game is becoming little bit better and as soon as we start uh fix doing some of those small fixes like the XP curve the council rank gating etc you guys will see huge improvements on the overall experience for sure thank you everyone for attending us today Michael and John thank you guys Uh we’ll meet again right after the pro.

So see you guys in 1 minute. >> Thank you. Thank you gentlemen.

Thanks everyone. [laughter] >> See you. >> Bye everyone.

See you.