Star Atlas — Research by Cryp2Gem

A transition from traditional to blockchain gaming!

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PROJECT: Star Atlas

TICKER: (ATLAS) and (POLIS)

FOUNDED: August 2020

WEB PAGE: https://staratlas.com/

WHITEPAPER: https://staratlas.com/files/star-atlas-white-paper.pdf

FIELD OF INTEREST: Gaming

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In Space no one can hear you scream…sorry wrong project!

Star Atlas is a massively-multiplayer online meta-verse. In the distant future, three galactic factions have emerged, (1)The MUD Territory governed by humankind, (2)The ONI Region as a consortium of alien races, and (3)The Ustur Sector controlled by sentient androids. in an ongoing struggle for resources, territorial conquest, and political domination. Players can join a faction, directly influence the course of the meta-verse, and earn real-world income for their contributions.

Star Atlas has all the whisperings of Eve Online. Eve Online is a space-based, massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which has a daily player count of over 20k players, peaking at around 33k.

Eve Online is an old game, it has been active since 2003 but it features some of the most die-hard gaming fans known, possibly second to only World of Warcraft (WOW). Because it is old, the games code does not take advantage of current hardware features. This is an opportunity for Star Atlas, which we will explore later on.

Star Atlas is setting itself up nicely with a whole host of game mechanics which will allow intricate gameplay in its vast space-based massively multiplayer online game. It is also adding blockchain game mechanics which will allow it to set itself apart from other games within the genre.

Some of the blockchain mechanics include:

• Blockchain based in games currencies (ATLAS and POLIS)
• Decentralised NFT asset ownership
• Mining revenue based on territory control
• Decentralised digital currency exchange with automated market making (AMM) in game
• Real-time smart contract execution of game scenarios
• On-chain governance model designed for political control
• Built on Solana for a server-less approach

Game mechanics:

• Grand strategy space exploration
• Land and territory control
• Vehicle and fleet control
• Space and land-based mining
• Player vs Environment missions (PVE)
• Player vs Player combat (PVP)
• Dynamic career system

Interesting Gameplay Features:

Faction Security Zones — New players will choose one of the three factions and start in that faction secured safe zone. This is to allow them time to get used to the basic functions of the game and to also introduce them to the gameplay loops, such as rescue, combat and salvage.

When the player is more confident they can venture out into a medium tiered safety one, one which is secured by mercenary groups. Combat is allowed in their medium tiered zone but your assets will reset if they are destroyed.

The final zone is a wild frontier where full combat and destruction of assets takes place, the destruction is also a permanent event. However, only a portion of assets are destroyed permanently. The remains of a destroyed ship can be collected in the form of components, scrap, and escape podded crew members.

Deep Space Exploration — Star Atlas is a massively multiplayer open universe meaning that all visible stars are real assets and can be visited. This will give players true open exploration to go anywhere within the universe but some destinations, however, are extremely far away and would require a ship to have the correct amount of fuel to reach them.

Players can manually pilot their ships to explore and uncover the riches of the Star Atlas universe. A cool game mechanic is the upgradable scanning modules which will allow them to perform deeper and broader scans of the universe to identify new locations and riches. The results of the scanning data can be acted upon or sold on the marketplace.

Combat — Ships will be fitted with weapon and missile bays. The weapons will be energy, ballistic and disruption types which can target enemy ships and installations. When a player encounters another ship, they have the ability to scan the ship to identify the subsystems, which can give them advantage in a fight. Ships also have the ability to scan and target land-based installations as well as having the ability to set their combat stance to either passive or aggressive adding even more depth to the combat mechanics.

Station Modular Construction -

Star Atlas will feature mining installations which will protect their mining claims. Space stations will have the same installations but with an added feature called ‘decks’. Each deck enhances the functionality of the space station and unlocks features the player can engage with. Decks include:

• Commerce (storage and trading)
• Shipyard (for ship manufacturing, repairs, re-fuelling, configuration and docking)
• Refinery
• Hangar (ship storage)
• Retail (crafting and selling components and advanced materials)
• University (training and recruiting crew members)
• Cargo (storage of materials and components)
• Defence (building turrets for defensive purposes)

Space stations that feature commerce decks will be required to connect to the universal marketplace where they can sell low-tier ore and other items.

Crew & Ship Component Outfitting — All ships contain components and crew members which will enhance the overall features and statistics of each ship. Each ship will have a different aptitude for the variety of gameplay features available. Individual crew members can also enhance the ship’s functionality with their different aptitudes which they can advance at the University deck. Crew members that have a history together will buff each other’s stats over time.

Decentralised Autonomous Corporations -

The universe of Star Atlas is enormous! It is a lonely, challenging environment where space pirates and mercenaries are waiting to destroy you. Therefore, players are encouraged to create factions, combine their resources, and compete as a group to outsmart other players. Through the Decentralised Autonomous Corporations (DAC), entire space cities can be builts, and the micro-economy can be managed by those in charge. Strategic cooperation will allow players to dominate and control the resources within. The POLIS token will serve as a pivotal role in these cities, permitting owners of political power to impose taxes, fees, fines, rules and laws on those wishing to gain access to these independently owned cities. On the other hand, it is control like this that will kickstart the inevitable consequence of uprising and war!

Economics — Star Atlas will provide the player with the unique opportunity to extract in-game earning into real world income. The model for traditional, non blockchain games is to monopolise asset ownership and distribution through restrictions on reselling. Star Atlas allows the ownership of assets through the implementation of blockchain and NFT marketplaces. Digital assets owned always belong to the holder, and crypto assets earned can be converted into fiat currencies friction-free.

(ATLAS) will be the in-game currency of Star Atlas. It can be used to acquire digital assets in the form of NFTs such as ships, crew members, components, land and equipment.

(POLIS) is a multifunctional governance token, with applications both in-game and in directing real world economic policy. Holders of POLIS will be in a unique position of jurisdictional ownership over entire regions, regardless of who owns title (NFT) to the land and equipment rights. Externally, control of POLIS will enable the gaming community to influence decision making of the Star Atlas development team.

Core Gameplay Loops:

SCANNING GAMEPLAY LOOP

1. Scanning Star Systems & Celestial Bodies
2. Discover Mineable Resources
3. Stake Claim & Sell Mined Resources OR Sell Scan Data

COMBAT GAMEPLAY LOOP

1. Scanner Finds Other Player or Enemy
2. Destroy Ship & Crew
3. Salvage Ship Components, Crew & Pirate Cargo
4. Use or Sell Stolen Components & Cargo in Black Market Regions

TIERED SHIP MODULES & COMPONENTS

The ship size correlates to module slots. Each module and component unlocks gameplay features for that ship.

Examples: Scanning(Data), Cargo(Trade), Rescue(Crew), Mining(Ore), Salvage(Scrap), etc.

SHIP CLASS SIZES

Starter, Small, Medium, Large, Capital, Commander, Dreadnought

Star Atlas will cater for four distinct types of gamers, they are: Killers, Achievers, Explorers and Socialisers.

The Killers: Interfere with the game world or the playing experience of others.

• Piracy and smuggling (killing and looting other players to sell their goods on the black and grey markets).
• Ship to ship combat (offensive & defensive, player vs player, player vs environment).
• Ship to structure combat (offensive & defensive, destroying space and ground mining structures.

The Achievers: Accumulate status tokens by beating the rule based challenges of the game world.

• Collectible ships and crew members (ships are enhanced by crew members and their individual stats).
• Land and space mining accumulation (planetary, asteroid and nebula bodies are claimed and fitted with mining structures to acquire their resources).
• Space station builds (deck expansions per space station determine its in game functionality).

The Explorers: Discover the systems governing the operation of the game world.

• Open world, unlimited space exploration (as players explore the universe is revealed in an unlimited celestial and terrestrial universe simulation).
• Scanning data economy (after scanning space and celestial bodies, players can choose to either settle the land and space claims or sell the coordinate or resource data on the open market).

The Socialisers: Form relationships with other players by telling stories within the game world.

• Sub faction organisation (beneath the 3 major factions, players can manage their own organisations for teaming up and sharing resources).
• Real world economy (all game assets are backed by real world tokenised assets. This leads to an actively engaged community outside of the game world.

The question remains…which type of gamer are you!?

Star Atlas will focus around 4 distinct gameplay pillars. They are Grand Strategy, Exploration, Role-playing and Space Flight Simulation.

Grand Strategy: this genre encourages players to claim staking to expand their empire and install strategic trade routes using offensive and defensive tactical planning.

Exploration: the game enables players to captain deep-space crewed spaceships to scan and discover deep within the universe. Once they have been discovered, claims that have been staked can be mined, refined and traded through a network of commercial mining installations, refineries and the universal marketplace. Exploration will lead to many, many surprises in deep space.

Role-playing: the main principle driving the economy of Star Atlas is the mining gameplay. The wealth that can be obtained from mining will create many other revenue streams. You can trade raw and refined ore, haul cargo, craft retail components. There is a broad range of career choices for the player to choose from and advance their career.

Space flight simulation: the main beauty of science fiction is the space based adventure. The player can pilot or captain their own spacecraft into the vast emptiness of space. The immersive experience is fulfilled by allowing the player to use a virtual reality headset.

Tools used:

Unreal Engine 5 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC5KtatMcUw)

Next-generation real-time graphics technology include: Nanite for cinema quality models, Lumen for real-time global illumination, the Chaos physics engine, and the Niagara particles system.

• Nanite: with the release of Nanite technology via Unreal Engine 5 in 2021, traditional asset authoring pipelines become optimized and the visual quality is dramatically improved. Nanite allows limitless polygon counts for select objects. Without real-time polygon budget constraints, Star Atlas’ visual fidelity rivals pre-rendered computer generated imagery.
• Lumen: Lumen will allow far more believable and dynamic environments as the lighting doesn’t require faked enhancements with manually placed lighting.
• Chaos: Chaos gives the game an optimized physics template for destructible meshes and believable vehicle rigs.
• Niagara: Niagara enhances traditional particle systems with fully exposed blueprinting for the artists and easily implements high level shading language (HLSL).

Solana (https://solana.com/)

As blockchain technology continues to evolve towards greater capabilities, innovative development possibilities emerge. With the release of Star Atlas, all in-game assets will be delivered to the player as direct-owned non-fungible digital tokens. Players will possess complete control of their purchased assets. Currently, Solana is capable of processing 50,000 transactions per second, at 400ms average block times, an industry leading protocol. To complement this speed, Solana additionally delivers an expansive and robust development toolset, which the Star Atlas development team will leverage to build the metaverse. Such performance at the blockchain layer enables a future in which all game logic can be computed on a suite of on-chain smart applications. Our vision at Star Atlas is to deliver a purely blockchain-driven universe that will change the gaming industry forever.

Serum (https://projectserum.com/)

An active in-game economy and a high volume of trading means users will need a feature-rich exchange to manage all of their asset sales. Serum’s decentralized exchange (DEX) fulfills the needs to support the Star Atlas economy. With nearly instant settlement and virtually zero operating costs, there isn’t a better fit for scaling the economy.

Stardust (https://www.stardust.gg/)

Stardust operates at a very important layer. They introduce optimized ways to deal with non-fungible token in-game assets securely and in a user-friendly manner. By utilizing their API, we will seamlessly integrate Solana-based NFTs for usage in our initial game client. Stardust has a very prominent item on their roadmap to support Serum DEX trading, which aligns completely with our goals.

CHAIN /TOKEN TYPE: Solana

CONSENSUS MECHANISM: Proof of History (PoH)
LIVE MAINNET & SCALABILITY [TPS]: Solana 50,000 TPS

COMPETITORS:

The biggest competitor would be Eve Online. It is a space-based, massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which it has a daily player count of over 20k players, peaking at around 33k (https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility).

Eve Online is an old game, it has been active since 2003 but it features some of the most die-hard gaming fans known, possibly second to only World of Warcraft (WOW). Because it is old, the games code does not take advantage of current hardware features.

Eve is known for some of the largest space-based battles in gaming history (https://www.denofgeek.com/games/eve-online-best-battles/) with the cost of war totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in real-world money! These battles are so enormous that books have even been written about them detailing tales of corruption, revenge, heists, scams and wars.

Over the years, the scale of these battles have grown from a couple thousand players to most recently a 12,000 player battle. A battle in which the game crashed! (https://www.polygon.com/features/2021/1/15/22228837/eve-online-m2-mittani-papi-server-failure-hellcamp). It is clear that Eve is being crushed by its own success!

There are arguably other traditional gaming competitors such as: Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, and Stellaris as well as blockchain gaming competitors such as Dissolution and Moon Cryptopollis but non, in my opinion of course, stand up to the scale of what Eve has to offer in both gameplay and community!

TEAM:

Michael Wagner CEO & Founder

Michael is a serial entrepreneur, having founded multiple technology companies centred around the emerging blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, including: Tokes Platform, EDEN, Multichain Ventures, Automata, and most recently Star Atlas. He has 10+ years in capital markets analysis, holds his chartered financial designation, 7+ years in blockchain, 24+ years in gaming, and 4+ years in technology development leadership.

Jacob Floyd CTO

Jacob takes pride in elegant software development. With 11+ years of experience building apps in gaming, blockchain, and the fin-tech industries, he has launched over 33 successful projects. Acting as lead coder and tech architect in nearly every project he has been on has allowed Jacob to bolster creativity and prioritise innovation.

Danny Floyd CPO (Chief Product Officer)

Danny started his tech career with EA Westwood Studios on the first space-based MMORPG called Earth and Beyond. After 8 years of shipping AAA titles with Electronic Arts (EA), Mythic Entertainment, 3G Studios and 1047 Games, he co-founded Foware with his brother and continued first party video game and software development for another 10 years.

Pablo Quiroga COO

Pablo’s global business ecosystem has inspired multiple successful startups over the last decade, earning him proven expertise ranging from supply chain management, strategic market penetration and business intelligence. Pablo’s multi role engagement levels from leadership to founder to investor in companies such as Vanguard Scientific Systems, Reconscious Medical, and Fuelixir and continues with Star Atlas. Pablo’s exposure to plant-based supply chains and psychedelic mental health digital therapeutics brings a unique perspective to problem solving within the blockchain community. Pablo believes blockchain is the mycelium of the technology industry.

Tim Deneau Designer

Tim is a multidisciplinary designer, developer and artist. He has worked in the technology industry and marketing industry as a designer and developer, and in the independent games industry serving multiple roles in art production. He has 18+ years in graphic design & software design 10+ years in software development, 8+ years in art production, and 20+ years in gaming.

PARTNERS: Unknown

TOKEN USE CASE AND REVENUES:

(ATLAS) will serve as the native in-game currency within Star Atlas. It is the lubricant of the meta-verse. Players will initially leverage ATLAS to acquire digital assets such as ships, crew, components, land, and equipment. However, as in any real economy, a financial system is necessary to facilitate commerce. Whether it be through NPC merchants, or direct peer-to-peer transactions, ATLAS is the unit of account to execute operational requirements.

Operating a business is challenging. Managing resources will require critical strategic decision making. Players seeking the monetary rewards available in-game will need to carefully balance their operating expenses against income derived. Operating expenses, such as personnel for mining equipment, fuel for ships, and repairs for damages will all need to be paid in ATLAS. It will also serve as the predominant currency within the NFT marketplace.

A fraction of the game currency will be available through various stages of the Galactic Asset Offering (GAO), leading up to full launch of the title. Upon completion of the GAO, ATLAS can only be earned through in-game activity or sales by other players. Unlike many projects in the crypto economy, the development team retains zero stake in the undistributed token supply.

(POLIS) within the Star Atlas meta-verse, political influence is yet another strategic consideration in the management of territory and the navigation of space. Controlling this political influence introduces a number of advantages for player status, which is represented by the POLIS token.

Holders of POLIS will be in a unique position of jurisdictional ownership over entire regions, regardless of who owns title (NFT) to the land and equipment rights. These players will be able to restrict some of the activity that can occur while under their oversight, impose taxes on other players, charge tolls, and otherwise create a separate set of laws with which other players must observe. However, POLIS represents voting rights, not dictatorial ownership. In this regard, it will likely require multiple players to collaborate on these rules, fines, fees, tolls, etc., lest they be superseded by a more powerful group of players. Decentralised Autonomous Corporations would do well to take advantage of this tool.

Externally, control of POLIS will enable the gaming community to influence decision making of the Star Atlas development team. This will follow a period of centralisation of decision making, likely 2–3 years of game development and balance. At the conclusion of the centralised period, holders will be able to influence game economics (i.e. inflation rates), asset release schedules, game direction, and will otherwise provide some degree of ownership in development decision making.

POLIS distribution will take effect in two phases. The first phase consists of a 20% sale of the governance token during the Galactic Asset Offering. Following the GAO, the exclusive ability to generate POLIS relies on staking of ATLAS currency.

ATLAS staking will be delivered in-browser while game development is in pre-production, and will subsequently be accessible in-game once version 1 of the mini-game is released. Players should note, there is a tradeoff that takes place to earn POLIS. ATLAS that is reserved for POLIS rewards is not accessible for any other in-game requirement. In other words, a player can either stake, or use that currency balance to play.

The DeFi Financial System

Facilitated by a direct integration to the Serum DEX, players will be enabled to participate in decentralised finance activities, popularised during 2020, through a unique in-game interface. Players will engage with defi instruments (i.e. smart contracts) throughout the financial epicentres in the game.

DAO cities are a likely location for the rise of these financial centres, permitting the creators to establish their own fees for trading in their facilities. Examples of activities follow:

• Lending
• AMM
• Yield Farming

NOTES

• Star Atlas is positioning itself very well with a game concept that includes most of the features of the blockbuster game Eve Online. Star Atlas moves one step further and introduces blockchain mechanics, such as mining, NFTs and DeFi on top of its proposed gameplay pillars, game mechanics and intricacies which will produce some of the most fantastic meta-game elements.
• It is no doubt that Eve Online is number one for this type of genre but it is very clear that it is becoming crushed under its own success. Eve is an old game, with old code, which doesn’t make use of current, up-to-date hardware for optimisation and this is a huge problem. Eve Online would have to be made all over again to cope with demand. This is a HUGE opportunity for Star Atlas! Why would the community of Eve keep playing if they cannot go to war and battle? Maybe we will see a mass exodus from Eve to Star Atlas, this is not something that will happen overnight but it could certainly happen.
• Star Atlas is what I would call a generation 3 blockchain game. It moves far past predecessors such as generation 1 CryptoKitties and generation 2 ChainGuardians. Star is a fully functional game with the addition of blockchain features, we are truly seeing the transition from traditional gaming to blockchain gaming and with this game they are merging into one.
• Star Atlas will use the upcoming game engine Unreal Engine 5. The features are truly mind blowing. Games companies have been trying for years to achieve what Epic Games have done. Unreal Engine 5 will have real-time dynamic lighting with lumen, and unlimited polygon counts with nanite, as well as other features such as chaos and niagara.
• Star Atlas will use the Solana blockchain to utilise a server-less approach for the game. It is true we don’t know how this will perform just yet but as Solana allows up to 50k TPS it is very impressive. It is also said that a million transactions on Solana costs $10, which is a cost effective approach compared to servers.
• Star Atlas will be available on PC, Console and Mobile. This is a fantastic opportunity to reach a higher player count as Eve Online is only available on the PC platform. This feature all comes with natural cross-play meaning that if you are playing on PC and your friend is playing on Console or Mobile device you will be able to play together in the same universe.
• Star Atlas is in a unique position which we do not see with the majority of blockchain projects. During a bear market projects lose their value. I truly believe this will be different with Star Atlas because it is a video game with blockchain mechanics. Given the current opportunity that Eve Online is presenting we could see a mass exodus from Eve to Star Atlas, the more players the more demand for the token/s.