Star Atlas Event Recap 88: Atlas Brew #209 – PTR Updates

In this episode, hear an AI summary of the latest Star Atlas community event.  Full video recordings can be found on the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV at https://www.youtube.com/@staratlastv.

---

---

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3jgynrrzR0

---

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. If you want to listen to the entire recording, please check out the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV. Enjoy the summary. Here is a narrative summary of the Star Atlas community event, written in a conversational, podcast-style tone: [Intro Music Fades In] Host Voice: GM, space travelers! Welcome back to another recap of the legendary Star Atlas “Atlas Brew” community hangout. If you missed this week’s session, you missed out on a mountain of pure, unfiltered alpha. The vibe was incredibly electric, feeling less like a routine community check-in and more like a high-energy mini-town hall. Star Atlas CEO Michael Wagner joined the stage, sharing his absolute amazement at the team’s current development velocity. Michael joked that their output feels like it’s moving at a hundred times its usual pace, with single developers pulling off massive mechanical integrations in just a couple of days. The biggest news of the day centered on the roadmap for the C4 Play Test Realm, or PTR, which is getting prepared for two massive upcoming phases of content. Let’s dive straight into Phase Two, which is just around the corner. To make way for this update, the team announced that they will be executing a map wipe and reset, but the new features make it well worth the fresh start. The crown jewel of Phase Two is Combat V2, which completely reworks the deterministic combat system players experienced in HoloSim. Instead of the larger fleet automatically winning, Combat V2 introduces exciting RNG elements and deep layers of stat modifiers—including critical hit chances, dodge, evade, and specialized shield and damage types. To help players test their new builds, the developers are pairing this update with a heavily upgraded Nemesis Engine. This AI-driven NPC system has been optimized with much shorter response times and individual execution loops. It will be responsible for spawning dynamic PvE elements across the galaxy, meaning you’ll soon cross paths with wandering merchants, discover salvageable derelict ships, and fight back hostile pirate fleets without needing to hunt down real-player PvP. The discussion then shifted to the third major pillar of Phase Two: the Democracy Module. This represents the very first step toward true, in-game POLIS token utility. Players will soon be able to stake their crew members at starbases to generate voting power. With that power, they can influence local crafting fees, marketplace commissions, and revenue distribution. Michael pointed out that because this distribution requires direct in-game effort and asset alignment, it beautifully rewards active players while keeping the ecosystem robust and self-governing. As if Phase Two wasn’t enough to get excited about, the team blew the community away by sharing their vision for Phase Three, which focuses entirely on crew integration. Right now, crew members are largely just static numbers in your inventory. Phase Three changes all of that. The team is building a bridge to the Zinc network using the Token 2022 standard, turning every single crew member into a unique, mutable NFT. Your crew will have individual names, aptitudes, gear slots, and training paths. John even gave the community a live, sneak-peek demonstration of the new, mobile-friendly passive mission board. From this interface, you can assign individual crew members to missions like pirate patrols or relief escorts. Your probability of success will scale directly based on your crew’s unique stats, but beware—failure will carry consequences like crew fatigue or lost entry fees. The team also hinted at mind-blowing future mechanics like in-game recruitment, a starbase university module, and yes, even crew procreation. In other news from the event, the team gave a highly anticipated update on the Unreal Engine 5 build. After successfully navigating some minor Epic Games Store listing hurdles regarding their marketing language, the client is live, and the multiplayer servers are currently being redeployed and should be fully up and running in a day or two. Brad and the engineering team have also made incredible progress on a highly addictive, “Satisfactory-style” building loop. Once players complete their single-player Galia missions, they will be rewarded with a claim stake, allowing them to land on planets, gather raw materials like hides and minerals, and construct their very own customized outposts. Throughout the event, the developers took plenty of time to celebrate the community. There was a hilarious shout-out to community member Sudo, who apparently has the Starbase menu completely memorized and managed to spot a hidden, unannounced UI tab during a split-second screen-share. The team also engaged in a fantastic design debate with active community members like Jindo and FunCracker, discussing how planetary scanning might be used to discover, map, and trade coordinates for rare PvE missions. To wrap it all up, the Star Atlas universe is expanding at a dizzying pace. Your immediate call to action is to jump back into the C4 PTR, keep grinding, report any bugs you find, and prepare your fleets for the upcoming map reset. Keep your eyes locked on the official Discord and product pages for the exact dates of the Phase Two release. Until next time, fly safe, and we’ll see you in the stars! [Outro Music Fades Out]

---

---

Star Atlas Event Transcript

GM. Can you guys hear me? Awesome.

Awesome. GM. XCode, my friend.

How are you doing? >> Good.

Good. I’m ready. >> while since we last spoke, right?

>> Yes.

Yes. >> Man, don’t know what happened, but my throat is don’t know. Kind of an open wound right now.

Whenever try to breathe, it hurts. >> Oh, no. >> Yeah.

guess age is finally Oh. Getting its price from me. I’m getting old.

>> All those late nights with the baby. >> Exactly. >> Yep.

>> GM. GM, my friend. >> got any gray hairs yet?

>> Oh, man. Let’s not talk about that. You’ll make me sad.

Today, this year, turn 36, John. >> Oh, okay.

That’s respectable age. >> Yes, exactly. would be the village ancient in the medieval times, you know?

>> Yeah.

Yeah, I’d be the um bariatric old man in the medieval [laughter] times.

Well, before Michael gets in here and embarrass myself trying to screen share, I’m going to try and screen share. >> Yes, please. >> We’ll do quick test.

We all know how this goes. With my uh >> [laughter] >> with my setup.

So. >> Oh, let’s go, John. >> Mhm.

Mhm. >> It works perfectly. >> Beautiful.

>> First try, John. >> First try. Got it figured out.

>> This is what call progress. >> Look at that food. Oh, could go for some food right now.

Some of that eggs and sushi or whatever it is. >> Yeah. Uh >> Now that we know that works, I’m going to turn that off.

>> Yes. >> Come back to that later. >> Everyone, welcome to No, no, he’s just Yes, exactly.

Gentle. Geez, John, people are ready.

People have such such keen eyes, John. >> How did he see that? >> They saw that, John.

>> How did they see that? >> don’t know, man. Like >> Sudo, how did you see that?

>> Hawkeyes or something like this. >> didn’t even click on the tab. >> Exactly.

Like, how did How did he know? >> Maybe distracted him with the food. >> [laughter] >> He knows his menu.

>> He does know the >> The guy’s legend. The guy’s legend. >> My word.

>> True seeker of BTR grinder.

So yeah guys we have some cool stuff to talk about today. And see here in the audience No way. Ah, Jesus Christ.

Even before announced it he’s already posting this.

We have our CEO, Michael Wagener, who was hyping people yesterday on our public chats about our team meetings.

So, GM, Michael. How are you doing? >> Good morning.

Doing great. How are you guys this morning? >> Uh, fantastic.

So, >> wasn’t trying to leak anything, but Sudo leaked it. I’m bad. >> Yes, Sudo.

mean, we have >> Apparently he has the starbase menu memorized. >> Exactly. And mean, we have some cool stuff to share today, right, Michael?

Yesterday’s team meeting was pretty exciting. Any new fronts, guess? >> Uh, just yeah, mean, exceptionally think number of the things we we’ve already spoken about here said on the but it’s just uh so impressive getting the updates from everybody yesterday on how many things are moving forward and how many new features we’re adding in and you know, we’ll think probably want to spend some time focusing on the crew integration proposal that that you’ve really been working on with John.

Um that was super exciting and you know, don’t want to don’t want to steal the thunder here on any of the specific details, but some of the mechanics that you guys introduced on that uh on that presentation yesterday were very very cool.

So, um yeah, don’t want to jump the gun on it, but I again, just can’t overstate how impressive it is and excited am to be able to produce at the velocity that we are like given how much we’ve had to reduce on team size.

It’s just it’s kind of mind-boggling. >> Exactly.

It’s It feels like >> [laughter] >> exactly everyone’s not It’s not 10 people doing that’s the feeling. It It almost feels as if Iris and the Star Atlas themselves are helping us code stuff right now. >> [laughter and gasps] >> You know what I’m talking about there.

It’s It’s super cool.

We are super excited about everything that’s going on.

So yeah, maybe we should get started. Since everyone’s on stage uh and the way that want to do this right now is doing like quick recap on everything that we have been discussing the previous weeks. You guys have been following and helping us shape the C4 PTR.

So let’s do quick recap here.

We have released the C4 PTR something like has it been like 3 weeks yet? >> It’ll be 3 weeks on Thursday.

It’s been like 2 and 1/2 or so. >> Okay.

So 2 and 1/2 weeks we have posted the C4 PTR for you guys. You guys have been relentlessly relentlessly grinding uh helping us fix the bugs uh providing feedback on the features the UI UX interface uh huge shout out to this community that loves the game shows lot of passion help us build this. And while you guys were testing while you guys are grinding we were here developing some really cool stuff.

And we have two let’s say, waves of releases coming. Today’s brew was going to be about those two two two different waves of releases, and they will be integrated with the C4 PTR. Uh it will surely give you guys lot of content to go through.

Uh each one of those phases like are massive things on its own. They pretty much reshape the PTR that you guys have in hand right now.

So, what are you going to do now is talk about phase two, which is the the next update. It should be the It should come becoming really soon, right Michael? think we are just wrapping up the the last things that we need to to release this one.

And then, we’ll talk about what Michael just spoke about, phase three, which uh deals with lot of things that you guys have been not only you guys, we all here in Not only that have been dreaming about for long while now.

So, phase two, the first one that’s that’s coming now, uh the next release, it’s coming the uh don’t want to give dates here, but it should be pretty soon.

It’s going to to introduce few very cool new mechanics to the game. Uh Michael, feel free to jump in at any moment here, but and Joe as well, because Joe is working on the Nemesis engine. Uh we are going to this next phase, phase two is going to revolve around uh three main pillars.

The first one is combat V2. Uh combat V2, he works the atomic combat that you guys are used to while playing Hollow Sim. Uh it basically integrates hundreds of new uh stuff.

Like, for example, we have different damage types that are influenced by RNG factors. Uh you will you will no longer be only uh checking who has the biggest fleet, but who has the fleet with the best build to counter each other. You guys will be able to focus on creating optimal fleets to deal with different kinds of situations.

Uh what else in terms of combat here? We also have >> Jose, would would just mean, know we covered this bit last week, but just to re- that V2 is really all about stat modifiers. mean, that [clears throat] other than just pure attack power, damage output, again, it’s, you know, pure attack power damage output where actively deterministic, you already know who’s going to win just based on combat V1, that’s what we played in Hollows.

It’s uh extensive layers of stat modifiers for things like crit chance, crit damage, dodge, evade, different damage types, different shield types, um and do some of the stuff that we’re you know, kind of closely correlated to combat V2, and that’s the cultivation claims outputs, and the stems uh that you’re going to be able to do those, and then how the stems all apply to crew enhance your the your fleet.

So, >> Michael, you’re little bit >> Uh this one’s frequently. am >> [laughter] >> have internet available to me where live, but live kind of up in the mountains and the internet is still pretty bad. Um what I’m going to do if I’m still breaking up is just go flush the the Wi-Fi again and see if get better connection.

So might stay down for moment here. >> Yeah, no worries. We’ll cover you while you you do that.

No worries.

So >> I’ll be back. >> Yeah.

So as Michael was saying, combat v2 is rework of the atomic combat that we had before.

So now combat is no longer uh deterministic.

We have variables that will influence the outcome of combat. Things that you guys can do to to shape your fleet’s combat capacities besides the fleet configs. There are different types of damage.

There are different types of variables. Uh the rule the defensive holes of the ships everything gets uh more customizable. Everything gets more interesting.

And now players can actually build stuff like creating different systems, different fleet compositions in order to actually engage with your enemies and with NPCs in game. Which it’s good segue John here to start talking about the Nemesis engine which is also coming in this phase two of the C4 PTR. Can you do quick recap here John on what we can expect for phase two?

>> Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. >> Nemesis. >> Yeah, so uh those who played Hollowsim last um or were have been playing Hollowsim recently.

The the Nemesis engine is the the AI piece, NPC piece that opposes you while mining asteroids in Hollowsim.

So, that gave us couple really interesting tools to work with. It gives us the ability to spawn fleets, fill their cargo holds, it allows us to target specific players, defend star bases, defend certain regions.

So, the Nemesis engine itself is the piece that takes care of wallet authority for action aligned NPCs currently. We’re expanding it to work with unaligned factions. And to break it up into, you know, multiple wallets.

And each of those wallets would be sort of an entity in its own right.

So, maybe the two for faction will have have wallet, have an engine. Um I’m also working on some performance improvements.

So, that the Nemesis engine doesn’t run in single loop. And that means that all fleets don’t share the same execution loop anymore. They’re broken off into individual tracts.

And the individual fleet has its own process that runs. And that should improve the performance of the engine significantly. It should give individual fleets their own personality.

If we were to hook in something like an agent there to actually make decisions for it.

So, currently all of the decisions that it can that it can make are already baked into it sort of thing. And it’s predefined execution.

But we have the option with some of the tools that uh that Tanner that TT Donovan is building to uh substitute in brain there, like an AI brain. Um and to run some kind of um execution loop.

So, we’re experimenting with that. Um yeah, but the big change is that the Nemesis engine will be repurposed for C4. And that the that the entities it spawns will have much shorter um response times and quicker quicker response times, shorter execution loops.

Um and then it’ll tie into some of the uh some of the more creative uses for those types of um for those types of systems.

So, uh for example, Jose was showing me uh sort of wandering merchant that he had built. And essentially, the Nemesis engine can spawn in quest giver or or um roaming marketplace that that your user has access to. Um we can also spawn in things like derelict ships for specific missions, and we can spawn in enemies like we did with the uh Super Phoenix event.

So, uh definitely expanding on that toolkit, and combat V2 will rely heavily on on that from the NPC PvE perspective. Um >> Yeah, this is Everyone, pay attention to this because this concept, this idea this idea that John just shared with us is super important for the remaining of this room. Because John um Nemesis engine gave us the tool to do lot of cool stuff.

Yes, Gindo, exactly what you are seeing over there. Uh right now we actually have the tools necessary to build random quests, trigger conditions, and anything that we so desire to spawn NPCs to determine their responses, to determine their personalities, to determine what type of items they spawn with, uh how how their behavior works, and things like that. Hold this thought because this is going to be super important as we progress in this brew.

Uh John, see FunCracker asking question about for about the mainnet’s translation here. >> Yeah, I’m thinking about how to answer that. Um So, at the at the moment don’t don’t don’t have any thoughts on how it would translate to mainnet.

Um Uh all know is that once the once the bridge exists for Zen and we’re moving mainnet assets onto Zen and using them there, um the Nemesis engine is dealing with NPC ships like um whether those ships are pulled from inventory or they’re So, I’m not sure exactly what he’s asking. If if you’re saying like, how do we deal with the the fact that there’s finite number of ships in the galaxy and that they’re all player owned, um how would the Nemesis engine spawn in assets from pool of what Automata owns or or are you just getting at like, how does this work on mainnet? Like Maybe you can Maybe you can tell me which direction your thoughts are going.

Yeah. First. >> The first.

>> Um >> Hey guys, I’m back here. Hopefully my answers are little clearer. >> Nice.

>> Oh, yeah. Your your sound great now. >> Okay, this is once or twice daily routine for me at this point.

I’m just kind of catching up. Is it uh FunCracker? Is that heard you guys addressing FunCracker’s question about um uh let’s call it asset density or utilizing the actual limitation of assets in the game.

>> Mhm. >> Yeah, as it relates to the Nemesis engine spawning NPCs or missions for whatever.

Yeah, so I was in my head noodling how we would get pool of of real assets to the engine on mainnet. Which which is possible. We just set aside pool of assets for it, but maybe you can comment further on that.

>> Yeah, it is possible. mean, we’ve we’ve discussed this uh through the economic lens of like does this translate into inflation into the game if we’re minting or not even necessarily minting, but using like off-chain assets uh for the Nemesis engine.

Right now, my current thinking on it is that this is it’s not really net negative to the game.

It’s not as though any of the NPCs would be ships that would ever be sold. Uh we’re not minting more into existence to increase the total um total supply of the assets in the game, and given that they would be dedicated specifically to these NPC functions uh to increase fleet density throughout the game. Uh think it would be reasonable approach for us to essentially have that uncapped and unlimited with the single caveat being um it that specifically because it’s coming from us, it’s coming from the game engine uh to uh uh place these NPCs on the board.

If uh if and when we get into the discussion around uh like the uh democracy module and the um certain optionality that players have to be able to make decisions about regional governments, which could include you know, things I’ve talked about like uh uh sharing or revenue distribution through fee capture. Um but one of the decisions that players could make would potentially be we would [clears throat] like to employ NPCs to protect uh this region on our behalf. would make an exception there and say we’re not going to enable unlimited fleets to be minted through that um diplomatic function.

Uh what would love to see in that specific case is probably an integration with uh the fleet rental system. And so what players are able to do is determine that portion of the fees gets saved and goes into uh regional vault and then they can vote on empire-ing other fleets, but the other fleets that they hire would need to be other player-owned fleets.

That’s the one exception uh that would make because in the alternative there is that we do in fact introduce unwanted inflation fleet assets that are not owned by anyone that are actually patrolling and protecting an area.

But again, just to restate, for the purposes of NPCs, um think it’s not unreasonable for us to use effectively some type of off-chain supply of that or some dedicated supply that will never be sold into the market, but is available to patrol the the galaxy. >> Yeah, this is quite interesting. Another alternative here, Michael, is that maybe the the regional DAO could vote on acquiring ships on the market, right?

To to make its fleet directly. >> Yeah.

Yeah, and I you know, think these are uh that’s good proposal. think these are like interesting financial decisions that we do want to empower regional governance of in-game mechanics to be able to facilitate. Uh perhaps off-topic, but what do want to clarify is that it’s we’re not going to have like pit system like we do in the top level DAO within the game.

You can’t just introduce proposal in the game to do anything you want. These are going to be specific mechanics that we provide and of course we’ll take your feedback if you want to see mechanic like it’s something that we can introduce.

But there will be [clears throat] specific mechanics such as you know, do we want to increase fees or do we want to reduce fees? We want the fees to come out of the the amount that goes to the top level DAO or do we want to add it on top? Do we want to employ fleets to patrol on our behalf or do we want to just distribute that revenue to anyone who has diplomats at that at that system?

And then to your point, do we want to purchase these ships or do we want to rent these ships?

You know, like those are there will be guardrails on what you can do and guardrails around how much you can increase the fee and whether it comes out of comes out of the DAO’s share or if it is an additional fee on top. Like But again, we’re going to be providing the options and then players with diplomats will be able to vote on those options.

So it’s just not it’s not like free for all like it is kind of conceptually in the top level DAO. >> Very interesting. Michael, since you are back now, do you want to add anything about combat V2?

Because think this this would be good moment to talk about the the democracy module which is also coming for phase two, but maybe you have some some stuff to share about combat before we move on. >> How much of my my comment did you guys catch or was it completely broken up? >> You were doing summary on how things work at all in Hollow Sim.

>> Okay.

Yeah, [clears throat] so so what was getting at is that we’re we’re combat V2 really introduces stat modifiers throughout the game. think that’s the simplest way to um to the kind of visualize what we’re adding with V2.

So, in HoloSim, it’s essentially deterministic combat with very easy to deter- to determine outcomes because whichever fleet is the more powerful fleet is intrinsically going to win, right? Higher attack power, better defense.

You know who’s going to win that engagement.

Now, by and large, there’s still obviously going to be balancing and balance between, you know, say an extra extra small fleet and like commander fleet, uh there shouldn’t be an expectation that the extra extra small fleet is going to be able to take that that much larger fleet out.

However, what we do get to add are things like damage modifiers, uh like crit chance, crit damage, dodge, evade, the different damage types, the different shield types. Um and then this is where was I had started to allude to some of the things that you can uh uh achieve or, you know, apply with uh the cultivation claim outputs, which are going to be stems that potentially apply directly to your crew members or apply to uh the fleet level. And that might be, you know, 10% increase to shields for 1 hour or an in- 10% increase to damage or 10% increase to mining uh power for 1 hour.

So, these are all going to the stems from cultivation claims are all going to be consumables that are temporary in nature. Uh but generally, the combat V2 uh introduction is this whole uh stat modification layer that now adds um bit more variability into combat the combat equation, right? Uh and and intrinsically some RNG.

It’s very possible that you get unlucky and your attacks miss three times and you get destroyed as result of that. Or you get very lucky and you know, you get you get three crits in row and you actually take out fleet that is maybe a tier higher than your fleet. All right, so think it it adds lot more dynamism into the game and pretty excited about it.

>> Yeah, absolutely. mean, we all are. And the addition of the teams is something quite interesting as well, like we all have been dreaming about uh herbology, chemistry in Star Atlas and this is the foundations of this new game play loop.

The ability to influence.

Yes, exactly Jindo. Time to start clapping the noobs. >> [laughter] >> Now players will be able to create builds, create different fleets of configurations to actually expecialize in combat.

Super exciting. And okay, so we have combat V2 with the Nemesis engine as one of the pillars.

We have the Steam packs, which will influence fleet performance as another one. And the third thing coming for the second phase of C4 PTR is the democracy module, which we were already discussing now. Michael, received some stuff from Jacob here.

Mhm, think will drop it on the chat and you can start just explaining to us the details. Here again. >> Yeah.

And and feel free to post it.

But before we jump into that, just to reframe our uh our process here is uh the combat V2 integration does require program change. I you know, know talked about this last week as well, but it does require program change. Um the consequence of that is it means we do need to reset the map.

And so what we are currently coordinating is really the the combat V2 um upgrade alongside the Nemesis engine that John’s been working on. Uh think those two are quite complementary. The Nemesis engine itself is going to create um enemy objectives that you can go out and attack even within your own faction.

So, given that’s closely correlated with combat actions, now you won’t need to go navigate and identify an real player uh to engage in PvP. There will be PvE within engage in and then test out that combat V2 system that we’re introducing. Um so those are really the two core things.

Closely coupled with that is the uh cultivation claim um uh feature, but to be clear, it’s you know, all of these things that you’re talking about, Jose, we don’t necessarily need to release them all collectively. I’m I’m kind of just waiting to see where we land on Nemesis engine and combat V2. And if that’s ready in week, then we’ll we’ll let you guys know and um get you prepared for wipe and reset uh with the addition of those features.

Otherwise, in between, if cultivation claims becomes available, if the uh democracy module becomes available, we will probably just ship those straight to the client. Uh but the combat V2 is the big one because that requires the reset. >> Oh, interesting.

Thank you for the clarification Michael. >> [clears throat] >> mean, the sooner we get new content, guess, the community will be happier. >> [laughter] >> So, yeah, let’s just release it again.

>> think it’s probably getting little bit stale out there. know some people feel like they’ve kind of topped out uh what they can do within the play test right now. >> [clears throat] >> Um I’ll mention one more thing, and that is just that uh you know, John and and the and the team, we talked about it yesterday.

We have been little bit uh slower on bug fixing, kind of deprioritizing those in the short term just because we have like five or six very exciting features that we can plug in. Um and I’m kind of more motivated to get those features out and then do additional testing and then get back into bug fixing.

Not to say that we’re not doing it right now. We know there’s some blockers and we will take those on, but um the the priority has shifted slightly into the new features just because they’re all pretty compelling to add. >> Absolutely.

>> [laughter] >> So, I’m not I’m not going to read through this whole thing that uh Jacob >> Sure. >> uh drafted up.

I think maybe the easier thing to do and I’ve explained lot of these mechanics. Uh now this uh you know, image that you shared probably helps visualize it, but why don’t we just pause for second and see if there are any specific questions. And if somebody wants an overview of how this democracy module is supposed to work again, uh can get into it and do that, but I know we’ve explained it handful of times, so don’t want to be uh repetitive here.

>> Absolutely. And see Gino already asking here, Michael, if we’ll be airdropped test polis for this or we are using our actual PVP that we have in our accounts. >> that’s good question.

actually need to circle up with Jacob on.

No plan to airdrop uh like test polis because there is no DAO infrastructure on sync right now. Um What I’m not entirely clear on is how we’re going to map um player’s PVP from Solana mainnet over to uh over to C4. And what we might do is just assign a blanket value.

You know, it might just be placeholder value everybody gets don’t know, 500,000 PVP to uh deploy across the the galaxy and think that would be the simpler thing to do for now. >> Interesting.

also posted sneak peek that Jacob shared with us, it’s still not the final UI UX version here, but this gives you an idea of how it’s going to work over overall. You have your voting power, which is based on the crew members that you have on the starbase. Uh you have the option to assign them to starbase, they’ll be staked there.

So, you have your PvP uh you have you you’re able to use your PvP as long as they are staked in that starbase.

And then, we have the different things that we can use uh that PvP that you have on.

So, for example, the example here is the governance vote on crafting fees. Uh local treasure share, reward distribution, and marketplace fees. think those are the features we’re going to to launch from the get-go right Michael?

>> Yes. The the priority for me is to create this revenue distribution mechanic, uh which think is very powerful for policy utility. Um something that is more difficult for us to cheat achieve from regulatory standpoint from the the Pinaculum DAO, that’s the you know, the DAO as we know it today.

Um distributing any assets from the DAO treasury um uh puts us at risk of perception of being security. Uh the differentiator here is this is an in-game mechanic, so it’s obfuscated from just pure revenue distribution, and then, you know, thinking through legal analysis and things like the Howey test. Uh one of the um one of the prongs of the Howey test is the expectation of profits uh based on the efforts of others.

Right? And so, um the in-game mechanic actually requires your effort. You need to be directly engaged.

You need to have assets in the game. You need to make decision about where to place your diplomats, you need to vote on the governance system itself. And so you need to be directly engaged and it’s um from our perspective not too dissimilar to just the way that we distribute Atlas emissions for gameplay itself.

Right, you wouldn’t say Atlas is security because it’s something that you can earn in the game. And uh in in much the same way um if we’re distributing Atlas to players based on Polis utility, we wouldn’t say that that’s security either.

So this is something that we’re always considering, uh but again think it’s obfuscated bit by being in the game and my priority was to identify path to revenue distribution uh based on economic activity and GDP in the game. And that’s what we can achieve with this and then we get to drive that additional utility to crew members um by coupling the crew requirement to deployment of your your Polis voting power. >> That’s it.

Boys and girls, super exciting. mean, we all wanted Polis utility in game for so long.

So seeing this come to life, especially pretty soon, is huge huge realization. At least for me. Does anyone have any other questions for Michael regarding the democracy module?

>> And while we wait for that, um I do see Funkcracker just posted, but I just want to address there’s little discussion going on about rewards for play testers. Um it’s very possible and likely that we do some type of cosmetic reward at the conclusion of this like we’ve done through the Hollow Sim seasons. Uh the primary financial benefit, if you will though, is going to be the ability to earn SYNC XP for playing.

Um have an open conversation uh with Chris right now about what mechanics we specifically want to track. Uh one of the challenges that we face in products like Hollow Sim and currently C4 is that it’s it is completely free to play and um you know, there’s no kind of capital requirement to uh participate and you’re not paying any real transaction fees for various actions.

So, some of the mechanics that we use in in like Sage uh ZXP tracking that has real economic cost in processing transactions um that allows us to track the consumption of resources.

Well, that that’s real uh cost input that doesn’t exist in C4 and so um like we we solved this with Hollow Sim quite elegantly in my opinion through the achievement system.

So, there was very real time requirement to be able to complete those achievements and earn your Zink XP.

So, we’re just trying to figure out exactly what we want to track in C4. Uh but as soon as we determine what that is then we’ll introduce the uh the ZXP um mechanics for C4 and think we’ll have that in place uh when we do this next release uh with the combat V2 and and wipe. >> Interesting.

Michael, do you want to take Fun Cracker’s opinion here? >> Yeah, let me let me just read through it. Uh interesting proposal, Fun Cracker.

mean, we’re not fully locked in here. uh I the the main thing for me immediately was uh getting the crew utility. don’t know if would suggest that we should do claim stakes.

Um what might be cool is having HAB requirement and the HAB requirement also scales with the number of crew that you need to house there. Um that that’s that’s pretty interesting proposal. Let’s see if the redistribution.

Well, and and on the second point, this is specifically why did want to include asset ownership requirements because there is direct conflict of interest between somebody that um just holds POLIS voting power but no game assets and somebody that holds POLIS voting power and game assets. Um naturally, if if you exclusively hold POLIS and therefore POLIS voting power through you know, through staking uh you would always vote to increase to the maximum fee because that’s going to lead to the maximum revenue distribution to you. Um however, if you are player in the game and this is part of the call it the you know, democratic strategy or political strategy of the game.

If you’re player in the game and you’re operating at say frontier starbase where you’re processing all of your crafting jobs and you know, you’re trading frequently on the marketplace which are the the mechanics that generate fees.

It’s very possible that you might actually vote to reduce those fees as low as possible. Uh because you know, that’s direct cost savings to you.

So, rather than focusing on the revenue distribution side and income side, you’re focused on how much on how much can save by reducing fees in that region as far as possible. Um so, in that sense, think it’s actually the opposite of self-serving.

Now, you might also decide that you are going to employ your diplomats at different system that you don’t operate in and you’re going to increase the fees on that system and you’re less concerned about reducing fees in the system that you operate in. Like that’s that’s all very possible as well. Um but I think we are trying to address this conflict of interest concept through the asset ownership requirement.

don’t know if that answers your question. >> think that’s very interesting mechanic.

Yeah, think FunCracker is losing to the regional DAO’s concept that we had in the white paper of Star Atlas. And think it’s matter of development, right? Uh so we can reach the point where we can partition the top DAO with regional DAO, faction DAO.

Et cetera. This This is an interesting conversation. >> Yeah, I’m reading through the chat right now, just getting caught up as well.

Uh yeah, but mean selfishly FunCracker and just to be transparent with you guys, mean I do want to do kind of want to, you know, strike balance of like accessibility of these mechanics versus the investment into assets required to engage in them.

But mean selfishly, if we were to include uh CSS hab uh requirement, which could be placed at any starbase in any system, obviously that’s good for us and for anyone out there that actually owns the the CSS land plots, you know, this is direct benefit to you because now your land plot is what unlocks your ability to house certain number of crew in addition to the crew unlocking the amount of PvP that you can apply.

So it does start to create stronger balance across um diverse asset ownership throughout the entire ecosystem.

So that’s an interesting one. um we’ll we’ll discuss that little bit more, but you know, my immediate thought is that it’s it’s actually pretty cool um additional requirement to layer in. >> It’s interesting, for sure.

Any other questions about the democracy module? Or we can move forward because we still have lot to talk about today. >> Yes, Jet.

The There is uh min-max on fees. don’t know if you were here when was discussing the guardrails concept, but effectively, we’re going to say, and I’ll just give you an example, but you know, the crafting fees baseline are 7%, and there’s couple of different ways that we could implement it, but let’s say what we would what we would provide to you guys is an an option to select to increase fees by up to 2. 5% with 0.

5 intervals.

So, you would vote on one of five different options. Do want 0. 5, 1, 1.

5, 2, or 2. 5?

But, you’re not going to be able to say, “I want 99% fee on the starbase. ” We will define the parameters that you can vote on, and then those will be the the boundaries. You’re late.

Don’t don’t let it happen again. >> Come on, chat. For Robert’s priorities, man.

Right.

So, think this is good moment for us to move forward with our agenda today because we have some exciting stuff to share. What Michael has been talking about here today is the near-term improvements to the C4 PTR that we already have lined up for the upcoming sequences of releases.

But, we have been building some other stuff. Stuff that relate to mechanics and things that the community have been dreaming about for long time to see implemented in the game, to be able to pick them up, and be able to use their assets to the full extent of the Star Atlas vision, especially the crew member system. As you guys know, right now crew members are pretty much commodity in game.

They they are not unique. All of the crew members uh work the same way it as one another. Even crew members of different rarities, all of them are basically uh inputs to have your crafting jobs done, to have your fleet’s composition fulfilled.

And it has been our internal desire to change this for long time now. Uh and mean, I’ll you know what? I’m going to let John uh take the lead here on what we are building because promised him that wouldn’t overhype this next part of the brew.

So, John, if you if you can be so kind as to take the lead on the discussion here on what the two of us have been building for these last those last days. Uh feel it is good. It is The community will be happy to hear your thoughts and what we have been doing.

>> Yes.

Okay. Um Yeah, crew stats utility.

Yes. Um so, just given where we’re at with the PTR and with the desire to have crew fulfill their role, to have utility, to be these mutable NFTs that grow with you while you’re while you’re using them, exploring, crafting, uh all those things. Uh so, Jose came to me and said, you know, really want crew to function in game as we as we um had always hoped that they would.

So, we broke that process down and um because Zinc is not going to support CNFTs, uh but we have control over the network completely. Um we’re able to just take the CNFT and bring it into our bridge and mint corresponding NFT on the other side using the token 2022 standard. Um and so we’ve we’re we’re in the process of doing the research right now to make sure the token can hold all the data that it needs to and and our preliminary says yes, like everything we want to do with crew.

So, the things that you see now with their aptitudes and their, you know, their age and where they were educated and all that is is like good example of the data that we want to have access to. On top of that, we want to give them skills and um aptitudes and we want those skills to be affected by training.

So, if you train in particular area, the skill gets higher. If you lose in mission number of times over and over again, your skill in another area may go down. We want to be able to gain XP and apply that through the council rank system.

Um so, the to the NFT standard allows us to do all of those things and we’re happy with that. We’re going to bring your CNFT crew into the bridge and we’re going to mint one unique NFT for each crew member that you bring into Zinc. Um and once they’re there, uh we’re going to start reworking the crew systems like the the way that they craft things and the way that they are used in this diplomat system and the way that um fleets take crew, they’re no longer going to have like um just number inside of crew.

They’re going to have like each crew member will fill specific slot in that ship. And uh say you put gunner into your into your crew in in the gun slot, and then you participate in combat.

Well, now that guy gets combat XP, sort of thing. That kind of stuff.

So, we’re working through all of those things. Uh we’ve got here little demo I’m going to show. Um this is running on the PTR behind feature flag, which is why you guys don’t see it right now.

But, it is there. And Sutoso cleverly found earlier that this missions tab now exists. And, you’ll have to give You’ll have to forgive.

This is just a very This is quickly thrown together UI, but it storyboards the the process of um of crew missions, okay? Um so, one thing that we wanted to do is what’s like really low low-hanging fruit type thing that we can demonstrate the new mutable capabilities of crew coming in.

So, we’ve mocked out This is all mock data. We don’t have this crew system built yet, but we have the PR in review, and we’re going through how to build the system.

So, phase three should include these changes, right?

So, for phase two, you’ll see combat and Nemesis engine and diplomacy diplomacy and all those things. Phase three, you’d see um your crew now participating in every area that they were just number now. They’ll actually have stats.

So, I’ll just demonstrate this real quick, the storyboard. Uh say come to this CSS and look in the missions tab and I’m given list of missions that I’m qualified for, and there’s this pirate patrol one. It just gives you brief on what the mission is and what level you need to be, how long the mission takes, what it costs to stake uh in Atlas and your success rate.

And, what happens when you succeed?

Well, you earn 120 Atlas. Uh you get loot crate or perhaps. Uh your crew gains XP.

And well, what happens if you lose?

Well, you have crew fatigue, you lose that 50 Atlas stake. Um and then what can you do to modify this?

Well, can assign specific crew to this task specifically.

So, I’m just going to hit R, grab random selection, and confirm. And you can see my chances went from 60-something to 76%. And I’m going to accept that mission.

And it’s going to go into the active tab and start counting. And I’m going to come back here to the mission board. And I’m going to just keep assigning crew to some missions.

And yeah, the 96% like the sound of that. And I’m going to do another one for this relief escort. And I’m going to assign these guys here.

And this is mock data, so there are some bugs. And I’m going to accept that mission.

Okay.

So, let’s just simulate that I’ve finished the mission by clicking resolve.

Now, get the success status and it tells you, “Good job. ” you know. Um What we’re What we’re demonstrating here is that you you successfully completed the mission, you get the rewards, and that the territory itself is improved overall because you won.

And so, that ties into the health of the sector as whole, right? Uh we’re already discussing how these missions could in in impact sector health. Like people continually failing these missions not only hurt themselves, but they hurt the sector as whole.

Uh maybe the starbase takes damage or whatever if you don’t kill the pirates in certain amount of time. Anyway. >> Yeah, just let >> Yeah, go ahead.

Go for it. >> Yeah, just wanted to jump here real quickly. Uh couple features that this whole system that John was showing you will bring to Star Atlas.

First of all, as John was saying, crew members now become individuals on chain.

So, every crew member he’ll have aptitudes, he’ll have different stats, he’ll have different gear. And all of these are taken into account to calculate your chances of succeeding whatever your crew members are working.

So, for example, in this case uh, in mission to to fight pirates.

So, if your crew member uh, has bad stats on combat, he will influence negatively the outcome of the mission. Uh, if the mission is about uh, talking with refugees, for example, crew member who has high stats on charisma and things linked with that will help the mission to be successful. And as John was explaining, every mission, uh, or most of the missions in the sector, they influence the general uh, state of that sector in Star Atlas.

So, for example, if the players uh, let’s say you you have this planet in that sector, which is hidden, uh, it’s full of bugs like Janos, uh, creatures that are attacking claim stakes and etc. And you guys start failing repeatedly on driving them back. What’s going to happen is that that’s going to trigger an event that’s going to unstake everyone’s claim stake and the planets become overtaken by creatures and monsters and etc.

And this will require much harder quest to re-enable claim stakes deploy deployment in that sector.

This is an example, but that’s the kind of thing that we want to do here.

Also, in the future, this will tie up with factions reputation.

So, you can choose to do missions for specific factions in game. This will reward you uh reputation with some of them. This will diminish your reputation with others.

Uh asset ownership will also unlock certain missions specific to the player.

So, for example, if you have let will just give you random example here. If you manage to deploy claim stake tier five in one planet, it might trigger monster coming from the depths to attack your claim stake and your fleet.

So, this is the kind of cool stuff that we want to create. Uh and right now, we finally have the tools to do this.

Actually, those are ready in pro- production. Uh Joe and are working hard on that, on creating RNG encounters with NPCs, uh which will have unique items to sell you. Uh all sorts of things that we are building here that will make the next wave of releases of C4 PTR bringing uh this whole new frontier to the game.

Uh Joe even wants to do crew breeding, right Joe? >> [laughter] >> Yes.

That’s what was going to say. Uh procreation. Procreation.

think have to say this every time.

Yes. And I’m not going to say breeding, but procreation. >> [laughter] >> Still the opposite.

And another super cool stuff is that once we manage to do this, we can bring the marketplace of crew members inside the game.

So, no more we will be we will need to go to 10 search to trade crew members.

No, we can recruit them inside Star Atlas.

We can even gain this through university module where you need to build an an university in your starbase.

So, you are allowed to trade or negotiate crew members in that specific region. Uh we open many many doors. And we are super excited and I’m already not following John’s advice of hyping this up, but this gets me super excited.

You guys have no idea.

We have been working really hard on this and we are finally getting to see this happen and we are super excited. >> Uh fun cracker, you are posting in doubt chat by the way. see your comments there.

Yeah, but think this is an insanely cool feature and also had zero expectation when we started C4 PTR that we were going to be able to get individualized crew benefits in the game.

So, this is like an incredible development that came out of don’t want to say out of nowhere. It came out of you Jose and John, but you know again flabbergasted did not expect to get something like this in it all. >> Yeah, and addressing your comments here from cracker.

Crew members will also influence the fleet’s performance. And there will be some stuff that only fleets will be able to perform. Uh fleet quests, fleet fleet missions are on our radar as well, but crew members they are the atomic unity of Star Atlas.

Like when you go to Unreal Engine 5, you are controlling one crew member.

So, we need to develop this game play loop. It It’s part of the Star Atlas vision from the first day and it it is must.

It’s building block that we need to to bring to the game that will add meaning to all others gameplay loops.

So, think this is This is super important. Like, we couldn’t not develop unique crew members with unique traits, with gear, and etc.

That’s my point of view, at least. >> For what it’s worth, don’t don’t know that we ever publicly communicated this, but one of the um early concepts when we released crew was to come up with this crew expedition concept as way to add short-term utility. Uh we were never able to get around to uh to building that out at the time, and this kind of passive expedition model, think is really compelling.

It’s think it’s pretty cool. love the the variability and the probability of success based on the crew that you select. Um you know, in theory, that would actually drive more utility to the rarer uh crew that are out there because you have higher probability of success with the with the legendary crew, uh for example.

And uh uh this is also would be the first really like um risk-to-earn mechanic that we’ve added. You’re paying fee, you might actually fail, and you just lose that money. Um So, know uh portion of our community, and this was years ago, but got really into the heist, uh which this singular feature right here is essentially what the entirety of the heist was.

I think it’s it could be really attractive to people. Um Yeah, I’m I’m excited for this one. And when when mentioned yesterday things that we’ve never talked about before uh in the PTR chat, This is what was referring to because this wasn’t something that we even conceptualized in the game design of of C4.

So, good work, guys. >> Appreciate it, Michael. And yeah, mean very soon we all be able to craft gear for our crew members.

Uh mean max builds on character traits how to best assemble our fleets, how to best assemble crew member to work in claim stakes, to work on cultivation claims. Crew members will will reshape everything that we that we have built here in Star Atlas and bring the vision forward, guess.

This is no-brainer for me.

It’s super exciting super exciting. John, any last comments besides being mad with me for being >> not at all.

No, I’m trying I’m trying to write back to Jindo cuz he was asking how long we’ve been working on crew.

So, it’s probably easier to just say like crew has been on the tip of everybody’s mind ever since the ever since they were created, you know, year or 2 years ago. And um it was really Jose that surfaced the the fact that we can now now that we have our uh you know, we have C4. And there are number of mechanics that crew has been built to to to of ship stats and fleet stats and mining and all that and it just made sense to bring that back into the development pipeline and um so, crew’s been on our minds for long time, but we’ve all been focused on building C4 or building Hollow sim or building whatever and it took somebody to just bring that idea back to the forefront and just spearheaded and that’s what Jose did.

So So the mechanics and the statistics and all that, we have lot of old material to to go off of.

We have lot of game design. You guys go through the history, you’ll see lot of different crew things that were published around the time they were released and we have all that material to work with. Uh and the game design of C4 already has places for crew to fit in.

And so we just need to we just need to build them, build the the bridge that brings them in and mints the NFTs. And we can start slotting them in where they’re where they’re where they’ve always been designed.

So I don’t know if the missions thing will be the first thing that you see, but it certainly seemed like a low lift, high reward place to start. Um and uh talking with Jacob yesterday, um his thing was like crew is such an important piece to every part of what we’ve built, we should really we should really come up with plan to replace crew with these like just digit with real crew card and make that phase three. And so that’s what we’ve started to do is talk about phase three.

Replacing um fleet crew and you know, starbase crafting crew, missions and and diplo- diplomacy crew. Get rid of this they’re just number and now they’re an actual crew card. They’re tied in with the with the council rank system.

They’re gaining XP for for jobs they’re doing and they’re gaining bonus XP for their primary roles and all that stuff.

So Yep. Um and then see FunCracker here asking about fleets. Like again, the the the whole missions board idea uh currently is just scoped for crew.

It’s not scoped for for fleets.

You can take your fleets and you can go and do real missions with them, real combat, real, you know, territory control, attacking starbases, and stuff.

So, don’t know if we’ll expand it into into that or not, but um certainly um this type of like passive activity lends itself great to mobile apps, like passive mobile apps where you can check in and do something on small UI. You’ll notice that the crew missions UI is set up in compartments so that it can be easily read on mobile. Um so we do we we do want to have those types of options as well.

This helps with that, so. I’m not sure if we’ll extend it to fleets or if we’ll just leave it with crew members, but Oh man, you guys, there’s lot of typing here. Combine.

Unlock missions for crew. You’re scanning in NPCs.

Yeah.

Yeah. I’ve just been talking lot.

Actually, was on vacation last week, so maybe that’s why sound different. I’ve been de- decompressing. >> It’s actually uh his agent.

>> Yeah. Then he just >> programmed to join these. >> Yeah.

That’s funny. >> do like fun cracker’s suggestion there. Um that’s pretty cool idea that scanning is what discovers missions for you.

>> Mhm. >> mean, we could we could we could theory craft around this all day long. mean, it’d be kind of cool if you could even just sell your missions.

Like there’s marketplace for missions to other players.

So, you scan, you discover them.

You can either complete them yourselves or you you trade it off to someone else who wants to do it. >> Absolutely. As the use specific as deals that trigger missions, yes.

It’s on our radar for sure. All right, guys. Any last questions before we close this brew?

know this was alpha packet brew.

We will need to digest this next week, but UE5, Michael, you want to say anything about UE5? mean, we can >> Uh yeah, yeah. >> Send me that stuff.

>> Uh I’m just like really hyped on this uh this like crew conversation too. mean, the data packet. The other thing that’s cool is like you know, we could have options where you have revealed mission, so you know what it is when you purchase it, or you purchase the like unopened data packet, and then you get to open it up and figure out what the mission is.

And and all of those missions could have different rarities associated with them as well. Uh So, anyway, I yeah, I think the the possibilities are endless here. know that uh Uh where is it?

Where is this Yeah, Neo was talking lot about the extensions of governance that we could do introducing faction level governance. Like that’s definitely possibility. Again, just to emphasize, really focused on trying to get this revenue distribution mechanic introduced, adding utility to crew and polis.

Um that’s really the MVP. Uh but certainly there’s so much more that we can do with the C4 client um as we move on here. And as you guys have all seen, like the pace of development right now is I’m not kidding you.

I would say it’s 100x. Uh like thinking about some of these features what when we originally I proposed this like democracy module last year in February or March. And the projections at the time discussing with the engineering team was that it would probably take our full engineering team 3 to 4 months to complete.

And now we’ve effectively gotten it’s not completely done yet, but but in over the period of like 1 to 2 days Jacob individually single-handedly got the the basis of it built.

Right, so instead of 25 people working on one feature for 4 months, we have one person now that’s able to do something in 2 days.

It’s just absolutely incredible. And the models, yeah, the models just keep getting better here. Um which is only going to continue to accelerate the pace that we can introduce new features.

It’s just unbelievable. I’m I’ve like never been more optimistic about our uh future potential. Uh on the UE on the UE side, yeah, we we did identify an issue with the multiplayer servers and we are getting those redeployed.

It’s just taking little bit longer uh than would have expected, but would would expect that to be done in the next day or two.

Yeah, so with with Unreal Engine first of all, uh just to be open with you guys, you know, we submitted the new build after the town hall uh and then we got series of rejections from Epic Games Store uh and requests from them to update various aspects of our product page.

So, we had to go through and and make those changes. Um uh specifically they stated that we are violating their gambling policy, but it’s because of some of the language in our marketing on our social profiles uh and on the dot com site that they uh they requested these changes.

So, we had to navigate through that. We got those um uh you know, we got all of that resolved and then we got the client launched and then subsequently we identified that there was an issue with the multiplayer servers. And so, uh Jacob’s been working on getting those rebuilt and redeployed.

And again, that should should be this week. going to say within the day or two we should have those up and running again. Uh we don’t have Brad with us.

Did Did we talk about this? know we’re over, guys, but um lot of things to cover. >> [laughter] >> Uh think we talked little bit about like the claim stake and custom hub uh in Unreal Engine as well.

>> think we mentioned it, yes. >> Yeah, so seeing I’m seeing more progress on that.

Sorry about that. Um need sip of water. Uh but the If for anyone out there that’s played Satisfactory, uh that would be like the closest comparable to what Brad’s building out right now, and uh we What we kind of specked out yesterday was that it’s intended to be kind of the conclusion of the single-player Galia um mission system.

So, you go through the intro mission, you go through all of the missions capturing the star bases, and then as reward you like get one of these claim stakes, and then you can go navigate to any planet that exists in Galia today.

You can place your uh claim stake, and then you can start building out your hub, and then that would include things like, you know, resource requirements where you can go out and and hunt makey steers, you know, and and collect some hides, or hunt something else, or gather some other resources which then go into further construction of your personal uh hub and claim stake in Unreal Engine.

So, that’s pretty cool, also. >> As you guys can see, we have been busy. And soon that business will make their way and into your PCs.

So, get ready. Things are going to get heated here. And with that said, think it is good moment to close this episode of The Atlas Brew.

Michael, John, thank you guys for being here with me. Super exciting to discuss the C4 PTR and our product development with you guys. >> Yeah, welcome to the the new mini weekly town hall.

>> Exactly. This was >> [laughter] >> This was mini town hall for sure. Thank you everyone in the audience.

Uh we love you guys. Get ready. Star Atlas is going to get super intense in the upcoming months.

So, prepare. Help us make the C4 PTR as good as possible by giving your feedback, reporting bugs, and overall sharing with us your journey through the stars. And with that said, >> Thanks, Jose.

>> Bye, everyone. See you. >> See you next week.

>> See you next week. >> Mhm.