Blockchain and Gaming have, without a doubt, a future together, as we explained in our Sector DeepDive. In the past, we have seen projects like Decentraland and Axie Infinity show us where the industry is heading to. The ‘metaverse’ is absolutely buzzing right now, with more and more people getting interested in the next step in our virtual lives. Facebook changing its name to Meta shows that we are heading into a new era where our lives and livelihood are combined in the real and virtual world.
Now, imagine putting together a team of highly specialized people with experience in various cutting-edge technologies and a shared passion for gaming in one company. What you’ll get is a revolutionary new MMO Sci-Fi game that combines the best that gaming development software and blockchain technology have to offer. In the past, we’ve seen such MMO’s become very popular. With the game-changing mechanics to start making a decent income, the possibility exists that these games will become an even greater success.
Star Atlas promises to set the new standard for gaming. Players can be the true owner of their assets, invest in the multiverse, and start earning income by creating a new digital life filled with options to earn crypto, develop their character and region, and decide its future plans and outcome.
The game has almost a daunting scope of new ideas to implement. Let’s take a DeepDive into Star Atlas!
What is Star Atlas
Let’s first take a look at what Star Atlas is trying to accomplish. In essence, their vision is to create a vast universe where players can earn cryptocurrency in a variety of ways. A big part of it will be focused on interplanetary travel and combat, but besides that, there are many ways to get your economy going. By combining gaming and blockchain technology, players can earn Atlas tokens. Besides the before mentioned combat, players can also earn a living by developing land, mining resources, exploring far away planets, trading and even by issuing tolls and taxes. For the latter, the secondary token Polis will be vital. More on the dual-token system later.
It’s important to remember that all your assets are actually NFT’s. Land, ships, components, and more are verifiably yours, stored on the blockchain.
The Universe
Star Atlas is a virtual gaming metaverse based in the year 2620. Players start in a safe area where they can learn about the game mechanics, pick a race and buy their first ships. In the safe area there is no combat. You can look at this area as a walkthrough area where players have the possibility of just simply checking out the game without the dangers of losing their progress, ships, and other assets.
When you feel confident that you are up to the challenge of getting into some combat, the mid-tier area will give you plenty of options to try out your new ships and get some rewards for winning in battle. The fighting here will be against mercenary AI-controlled opposition. When you are defeated in combat in this area, your ship and crew will still be able to respawn so that you won’t lose your precious assets. This isn’t the case in The Wild Frontier!
In The Wild Frontier you can find the best rewards, however, in this area, your ships, crew, and cargo can actually be destroyed. Leaving some valuables and scraps for other players to find and take. Some of your NFT assets will be lost and have to be rebought.
Star Atlas isn’t only about combat, though. A large part of the game is economy-focused. Building outposts, mining resources, creating trade routes, and more are all part of the game, resulting in peaceful ways of generating an income in the game.
The races and ships
The Star Atlas universe is home to three different factions. Players joining the game for the first time have to decide which race they want to join, and this decision is permanent! Every race has its own set of strengths and a couple of local resources. It also means that you will often be fighting the other factions.
The MUD ( Manus Ultimus Divinum) Territory is governed by humankind. The humans have united under a common cause and originated on Earth. Their strong points are being industrial and relying on firepower. Manufacturing, creating outposts, and being overall productive will create means of generating income in Star Atlas, while protecting themselves with the proper ballistics and fire weapons.
The Ustur Sector consists of AI-controlled robots that had vanished for thousands of years but recently returned. Strangely none of them can tell you where they originally came from. The Ustur specialize in exploration and can build fast nimble ships with strong hulls.
The 3rd faction is the ONI, a consortium of different alien species. After years of war between them, bringing them almost to the brink of extinction, they decided to ally with each other in the hopes of creating a new golden age of prosperity. They focus on diplomacy and technology, finding new ways to enhance the life of every sentient life in the Universe.
Ships, land and Buildings
A huge part of what makes the StarAtlas Universe enticing to play in is the variety of ships and buildings players can acquire. These are NFT’s meaning that the ownership and the type of asset are locked on the blockchain, making them unique. Players can freely trade these assets, buying and selling them for other assets or transferring the value to another cryptocurrency and even fiat money.
The prices range from as low as $10 to an astounding sum of over $100.000. Although it’s, of course, possible for people with a large wallet to acquire these big ships, the idea is that guilds will combine their funds and purchase these together. The larger ships also need a large crew to organize and operate them, so it makes sense to team up before venturing into the deep space. However, it is possible to purchase NPC crew members or even find them in the debris after a battle.
All ships contain a predetermined amount of components and crewmember slots. Both can help improve the quality of the ships. However, it is important that you combine the right crewmembers, otherwise, it could even degrade your performance. Another neat thing is that crew members that are trained together in the university or trained on the same ship will get improved buffs! Another way of making this game interesting for Guilds and friends playing together.
StarAtlas works with a program where they periodically sell ships in initial offerings. However, they can be bought and traded ingame as well.
Below you’ll find a small selection of the ships that are currently available on the marketplace.
Land
As said before players can do more than battle their ships. Every plot of land in Star Atlas is purchasable. By buying a Claim stake, the player claims his part of the Universe. Then it’s theirs to do with what they want. They can mine resources, build buildings, and when their power is strong enough and their defenses set up, players can even toll the region and ask for taxes.
Every plot of land is an NFT. All differ in size, and the larger and more expensive plots of land generally have more and better resources. Every plot of land is Owned and never lent out. Taxes will have to be paid as well. This also incentivizes players to actually exploit their land instead of just buying with the intention of selling for a higher price. If someone can’t pay their taxes, the land will eventually be sold in an auction. All pretty clever!
Ways of earning income
Jobs
Although Star Atlas may seem to be focused on exploration and combat, there will be a wide variety of jobs in the metaverse. Players can specialize in specific roles, and skill trees will be available ingame to encourage players further to invest in those roles. Below we’ll list a couple of different ways players can enjoy the game and earn an income, but the economy side of Star Atlas is incredibly expansive. In the future, we will make an entire article based on ways to earn a living in the Star Atlas universe!
Extractors
Extractors have a vital role in Star Atlas. Everything will require raw materials to be used from building ships to buildings, research, and fuel. Extractors are at the forefront of the supply chain and will mine the raw materials from the land they can exploit. Refiners can further improve these raw materials into valuable resources.
Builders
Building in Star Atlas is heavily focused on finding and creating new ‘recipes’ that turn resources into buildings, ships, ship components, and more. With more experience in the skill tree, builders will learn about new recipes. Their efforts can increase the land’s value and income, and the items they built can be sold on the marketplace.
Explorers
Explorers will, well, explore. In the vast Universe, there are many remote star systems and planets that harness rare resources and secrets. Explorers will bring these back to their home base so extractors and builders can utilize these resources to further develop their technology and gain a further competitive advantage.
Fighters
Fighters ensure that your home base can be defended against potential raiders and mercenaries. The opposite is true as well. Whit a strong enough fleet, players and guilds can increase their zone of influence. For the daredevils, players can also buy in to enter matches and tournaments. The deeper they go into outer space, the more dangerous it becomes. But, with higher risk comes higher rewards. Just be sure you will be up to the challenge because you could lose your ship and crew if things turn sour.
Merchants
All resources, ships, and other items can be bought and sold in the different marketplaces in Star Atlas. Merchants can purchase a Retail deck at which they can buy and sell items for a profit and produce and even overclock components and crew gear.
Social
There will also be places in Star Atlas where you can relax and get away from the hectics of outer space. Players can be the owner of bars, theaters, museums, and more, earning Atlas by selling tickets and being part of the social aspect of the Star Atlas game.
As said earlier, this is only an overview of the different ways to play the game and earn an income. Within these roles, there are tons of different sub-roles. Think about fighters needing pilots, engineers, gunners, and refuelers.
Expect more info on the different roles in a later article!
Dual token system $ATLAS & $POLIS
Star Atlas has a dual token system: $Atlas will be used for most in-game transactions and rewards. Buying materials, ships, and ship improvements will all cost Atlas. The Atlas token can also be earned by finishing missions against NPS’s.
$Atlas is inflationary. In the first 5 years the inflation gradually decreases from 36% a year to 9%. After that, the inflation will remain at 4% per year.
There are ways to earn an income simply by holding your Atlas or Polis. Staking, lending, providing liquidity, and more. We’ll be sure to make an article and video to show you how to make some passive gains with your tokens in the future!
Political influence – The Polis Token
$POLIS is the Star Atlas’s governance token. It has value both in-game and in the real world. Ingame the token can be seen as political influence, giving big holders and/or guilds – also known as Decentralized Autonomous Corporations (Later more on these) – the possibility to decree laws and set tolls for traveling through their system, and tax landowners and producers within their political influence.
However, $Polis also has a function in the real world. Polis holders can directly influence the direction of the game development. In a couple of years, this can even mean that the majority of polis holders can oust the current developers and decide they want to implement their own ideas.
Of course, the developers are making sure that they continue to add value to the game and that players are happy with how the game evolves, but that this is possible is revolutionary in the game development space and shows the power of blockchain technology and decentralization.
DAC’s Decentralized Autonomous Corporations
DAC’s are essentially the Star Atlas Guilds. Guilds are a common practice in most online multiplayer games. They create an environment where players can find other like-minded people to connect with, go out on missions and battle versus other players.
In Star Atlas guilds will resemble actual corporations and organizations. Players can combine forces to maximize resource production, political domination, and, of course, defending or attacking certain areas.
Besides that, players in a guild can combine their $Polis and $Atlas tokens to increase their political and economic power. Going out in the Universe alone might be tempting, but joining forces will probably give you more security and options in-game.
Partners and Tools
Star Atlas is a one-of-it’s-kind game. By integrating blockchain technology, tons of new options become available for gamers. Since all in-game items are NFT’s the game needed a blockchain that could handle a lot of transactions and at a fast speed. That’s why they chose Solana. Solana has been on the rise for the last year due to being able to handle 50.000 transactions per second with block times around 400ms. Another significant advantage is the low gas fees. Besides that, Solana already has a couple of platforms that can enable decentralized Finance in-game. The Serum network specializes in that. By combining DeFi with the economic aspects of Star Atlas the possibilities to earn an income will increase dramatically.
You can imagine one of the DAO’s creating a New York like financial hub where players can Lend, Borrow, Yield farm, and stake their tokens. Banks can emerge and perhaps even insurance companies which will give you a bit of a safer feeling when venturing into deep space.
But it’s not only with blockchain that the Star Atlas team uses cutting-edge technology. Also with the tools needed to produce the actual game, Star Atlas will be using the new, and still in early access, Unreal 5 engine. The new engine has a couple of new bleeding-edge features, which include:
- Movie-quality photorealism
- Nanite: virtualized micropolygon geometry system enabling massive amounts of geometric detail in the games’ environment
- Lumen: a fully dynamic global illumination solution
- Better and bigger open worlds
- Better animation creation tools and more
In short, the visuals of the game could become stunning. Making the battles in deep space and the cities being created come to life even more. Add the possibility to play the game in VR, and it’s clear to see the power of the metaverse come to life and the opportunity for people to create a second life in the Atlas universe.
Gaming development partner
Additionally, Star Atlas has all-star support across the board on the gaming development side: Animoca Brands, Serum,and Moonwhale Ventures will help with the necessary DeFi and NFT gaming expertise to bring Star Atlas to the next level. They also have a key AAA gaming partner: Sperasoft, which co-developed salient titles such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rainbow Six – Siege, Star Wars: Battlefront, and more recently, Halo Infinite. Sperasoft has grown to over 600 developers, opened four offices worldwide, and will help bolster Star Atlas with building the Universe, play, and design. Having a partner with AAA development experience will be crucial for Star Atlas’ long journey ahead.
Roadmap
So far, the game isn’t out, and it’s expected to at least take a couple of years before the final release. However, what’s pretty cool is that the team continuously looks for feedback to improve their game and where to go next.
Currently, the marketplace is available and players can purchase their first ships and posters. In about a month the first plots of land will be available.
Minigame
Because the team understands that they have to keep their ever-expanding userbase involved a minigame has been released. They called is SCORE and it’s a way to start earning some (passive) income with your ship NFT’s. The first release was on December 16th 2021 and it was released as version 0. Basically, it’s not much more than staking at this time. All ships can be enlisted in your fleet and start earning $ATLAS.
The ships need to have Fuel, Ammo, and Food and need to be repaired every few days, these resources can be bought in the marketplace. As the development progresses, in time there will be specific mission for specific type op ships. The returns are decent, but are also dependend on the current $ATLAS price.
At the time of writing the cheapest ship, the Opal Jet, costs $20,- to purchase and generates 0,93 $ATLAS per day. However, as mentioned before the ships will have to be restocked with the necessary resources. With the current $ATLAS price of around $0,10 and deducting the costs of the resources this results in a net ROI of 146% per year.
Although it’s maybe an exaggeration to call this a minigame, it’s a way for players to get some returns on their investments, and the returns are not bad at all. Of course, if the price of $ATLAS increases the ROI will increase as well. However, the same is true if the price decreases. I expect that the minigame will become a lot more interactive with future updates.
Further along, there will be alfa and beta tests for groups of players to start giving feedback on the state of the game, but as stated before, this will take a couple of years. What the team is trying to build is very ambitious, and they are the only team taking on this daunting task so it won’t surprise me that there will be some unforeseen issues in the future, expanding the creation cycle. After all, with the implementation of blockchain technology also comes the fact of real money, and this isn’t something that should be rushed.
The team is very open with what they are working on, and if you’re interested, you can take a look at their roadmap here.
Conclusion
The Star Atlas team is trying to expand the possibilities and, as in their game, venture into new worlds and into the deep with what they are trying to accomplish. The scope of their vision is so immense and so revolutionary that it can become a new standard for gaming, where players can create a new virtual life full with possibilities to earn an income, develop cities and spaceships as they wish, and bond new friendships and allies.
It’s going to take some time, but if you want to be early in a promising space-metaverse, making a living in whichever way possible, it may be worth the investment and patience. With gradual upgrades and improvements, players can be kept interested and involved.
On the other hand, their ambition can become a pitfall. Trying to do too much, of which a lot hasn’t been done before, is a daunting task. An enormous weight hangs on the shoulders of the team. They will need to have the brightest on board to create the Star Atlas universe with all its components.
It’s still early days, but Star Atlas seems to have a clear dot on the horizon. The blockchain chosen is Solana, which has a solid chance to stay relative, and their development partner Sperasoft has all the needed experience and human resources to create a breathtaking game. They have the right partnerships onboard, an increasing number of investors, and a bright vision. We expect and hope that they can pull this off.
With the current hype of everything that is Metaverse, we see a shift towards this new gaming experience that overlaps the virtual world with the real world concepts, and we’re eager to follow the team’s progress in the coming years. Cryptodeepdive will become part of a DAC, and we’ll continue to update our readers on what’s new with Star Atlas.
The game simply oozes that recognizable sentence: To boldly go where no man has gone before.
Important links
https://staratlas.com/white-paper.pdf
https://staratlas.com/economics-paper.pdf
Where to buy your first $Atlas and $Polis
If you’re interested in getting started with Star Atlas yourself, the first step will be to purchase one, or both of their tokens. This can be done on the exchange FTX.com. If you sign up using this link, you will get better fees while trading there!
After that, we recommend installing the Phantom wallet and extension, which can be found here. You can safekeep your crypto and your ships there.
For more Crypto Deep Dives be sure to check my Hive profile, or visit www.cryptodeepdive.com!