Star Atlas

Goals of the Economy

• Building Intergalactic Empires

• Skill-Tree Progression: Minimizing Player Fatigue and Multi-Account Clutter

Building Intergalactic Empires

Star Atlas is a space race that will challenge its players to team up, organize, build, and fight their way into unknown territories. What will start as a group of space ships and a collection of small mining colonies will develop into full-blown civilizations, rapidly iterating on alien technologies and intergalactic diplomacy to explore the ever-expanding universe.

Naturally, the goal of the Star Atlas economy is to best align production of goods at scale with both a sense of long-term progression and short-term enjoyment to the players – all while making their collaboration increasingly beneficial to their teammates and faction.

Skill-Tree Progression: Minimizing Player Fatigue and Multi-Account Clutter

Most MMO games involve tapering reward curves and repetitive tasks that only serve to fatigue its players; where even the most devoted players will find themselves in a gruesome lottery-esque endgame—with impossibly low-rate loot drops and repetitive expeditions—draining the players’ excitement for new growth.

Star Atlas is different. By employing a skill tree approach, the game allows its users to dedicate their time and resources to a certain activity. This allows them to unlock perks and bonuses from their skill tree that they can then purchase with ATLAS—thus providing benefits—both individually and collaboratively. Additional perks and bonuses are subject to the discretion and development of the Star Atlas team.

Game Economics

Star Atlas is a game with an economic system that goes both wide and deep, connecting with every aspect of in-game activity. There are three large groups of mechanisms connected to economics: production, piloting, and overarching mechanics.

Rewards from piloting activities are the main inputs into the game economy, which flow into the markets that support piloting through the production game. Production connects mining, refining, and technological development in order to create new assets usable for piloting.

Broader mechanics that underpin the game are land development, character development, and the DAO system.

Most of the in-game items come from the production layer, with exception of rare equipment and resource drops from piloting, and an exclusive limited series of items injected into the game through sales (such as unique ships).

A key concept in understanding the production system is land. The universe of Star Atlas consists of regions, solar systems, and planets, and a basic land parcel represents partial ownership of a planet’s territory.

Production buildings are built on land, with more advanced buildings having additional requirements to the land they can work on. In addition, land ownership is required to participate in some of the governance levels. All land in Star Atlas is subject to Land Value Tax (covered in a later section), incentivizing owners to use it rather than simply holding it.

Resource Management

While there are several activities within Star Atlas to create economic value, mining will be an important pillar to the production within the Star Atlas economy. In order to partake in this activity, users must make an initial investment via the purchase of ATLAS or equipment. Basic resources (NFTs) will be needed as an input to maintain the mining output for natural resources. Mining yields resources, which are then used to trade or create in-game assets to allow users to carry out their jobs and produce value within the in-game economy. Blueprints are acquired by leveling up skills in the Building category, which are then used to unlock the recipes required to make each in-game asset.

The productivity of a player in mining progresses based on skill. Mining skill progression grants improved quantity and speed of resource harvesting as well as discounts in crafting and maintaining farm establishments.

Mining requires a special building (together with land and a NPC worker), player character’s skills, and power (supplied by power generating buildings). Resources produced from mining have to be refined before they are usable.

Game Roles

Different roles within the game create unique opportunities and levels of economic output for the player.

Extractors

Extractors are responsible for mining raw materials.

• Initial Cost: An extractor is a building that has to be purchased or produced prior to installation. There are also power requirements filled by power-producing buildings that have no running costs

• Maintenance Costs: Land value tax (see Land section) and fuel to transport cargo into orbit (collected in ATLAS). Gas fee in the form of ATLAS

• Yield: Raw materials, including additional fuel

• Perks: Increased energy efficiency and increased resource yield

Refiners

Refiners are responsible for taking raw material and converting them into usable resources.

• Initial Cost: Refinery deck costs a fixed amount of ATLAS

• Maintenance Costs: Land value tax (see Land section)

• Yield: Refined materials as crafting inputs

• Perks: Increased yield/conversion rate

Managers

Managers are responsible for making sure resources are used efficiently in order to create value and utility. Some manager-type roles include a Power Plant Manager and Salvage Operator.

Building

Builders experiment and produce new innovative goods to sustain and improve technology. Building is the exercise of finding the most efficient and novel ways to use farmed resources to create technological goods that can be utilized within the game.

Star Atlas will create the initial (and growing) list of crafting recipes for natural resources, and how they become new technological goods. Builders can either consume/utilize their built composite resources and structures, collect compensation from their faction for exchanging them, or sell them in the game marketplace for ATLAS. In addition, a player can also increase their building skills—which will lead to unlocking new recipes—and ascending tiers of technology crafting.

Building roles within the game include: Research and Development, and Production.

Research and Development

R&D is akin to crafting or alchemy, where players experiment with different combinations of refined and raw materials in order to produce new technology.

1. Initial Cost: Crafting rig costs fixed ATLAS

2. Additional Requirements: To operate, the rig needs to be placed on a land parcel that is not foreclosed

3. Maintenance Costs: Acquisition of raw and refined materials, pending the experiment, and an ATLAS gas fee per craft

4. Yield: New technology that grants advantages in mining, building, combat, and expedition

5. Perks: Crafting speed and improved recipe efficiency/potency

Production

These builders are responsible for the production and maintenance of technology at scale.

• Initial Cost: Production Rigs (fixed ATLAS), and recipes

• Additional requirements: To operate, the rig needs to be placed on a land parcel that is not foreclosed

• Maintenance Costs: Acquisition of raw and refined materials per recipe, and an ATLAS gas fee per craft

• Yield: Deployable technology Earned

• Perks: Crafting speed and reduced waste

Exploring

Explorers depend on fighters and builders to de-risk their expeditions and earn new opportunities to mine new resources. Exploration is one of the most complex and aspirational activities in the game. Explorers utilize ships and competitive technology to increase the efficiency and safety of discovering new planets and rare resources. Ships can be purchased as an initial investment for well-endowed users on a selective or limited basis.

Explorers are the “hunters” of this hunter-gatherer society, charged with bringing back materials for miners to potentially reproduce, or for builders to craft new technologies. These new materials can either be utilized to gain additional competitive advantage or sold for ATLAS.

Explorers can also improve their skills, which can lead to advantages, such as:

• Reduced ship damage while traveling

• Increased efficiency in mining rare materials

Fighting

Fighters depend on builders to gain advantages in combat. Fighting is required to capture loot—which can come in the form of resources and technological goods from other players—and expand the boundaries of control of your faction. A player can buy-in to enter into scheduled matches or tournaments or attack the outer reaches of space. The rewards increase the further into outer space one goes, but so does the risk and the cost of losing.

Fighters earn ATLAS and resources from the salvage of fallen opponents from winning matches. They can use them to either repair equipment and vehicles or reinvest into new technology/production or farming. Fighters can improve their skills, which lead to increased damage outputs bonuses and defenses.

Fighting roles include

Executive Roles

Executive Roles are responsible for ordering the Combat Roles to carry out actions.

• Initial Cost: Weapons and fighters

• Maintenance Cost: Fuel and repairs

• Yield: Bounty from raiding the losing ship

• Perks: Accuracy and critical hit rates

Combat Roles

Combat Roles are responsible for fighting and carrying out the actions instructed by the Executive Roles.

• Initial Cost: Weapons and fighters

• Maintenance Cost: Component modules and crew NPCs

• Yield: Bounty in the form of ATLAS and resources

• Perks: Accuracy, critical hit rates

In the special case of Deep Space PVP fighting, explorers and their fighters may risk losing all of the assets they deployed or brought on the expedition into Deep Space. However, the reward is bountiful.

Sporting Activities (ex. racing)

Certain competitive (but non-violent) activities will be added at the discretion of the Star Atlas DAO, with the first addition being ship racing. These sporting activities will encourage low-risk, high-enjoyment activities in times of leisure.

• Initial Cost: Ship to race

• Maintenance Cost: Fuel

• Yield: Prize pool

• Perks: Increased speed and fuel efficiency

Tokenomics

The activities and value creation within the economy would not be possible without a robust tokenomic structure of all the assets within the game.

There are four unique asset pillars to the economy of Star Atlas. All of them are represented both on-chain and in-game in some form.

• Monetary assets (ATLAS and POLIS, implemented as SPL tokens)

• Land ownership NFTs

• In-game items (ships, equipment, crew, ship components, buildings, and blueprints)

• In-game resources (fungible assets that are produced by miners and consumed by production)

Star Atlas has two fungible tokens that fuel all operations: POLIS and ATLAS.

1. POLIS: POLIS is the governance token used at each level of governance, representing financial stake in the game, voting power in the DAOs where it is staked, and control of the Treasury. It has a f ixed supply that will not grow (unless a decision to the contrary will be made by governance down the line).

2. ATLAS: ATLAS is the payment token used as a medium of exchange. It is inflationary, aiming to match the growth of the in-game economy and provide a solid monetary base for in-game economic interactions and onramps to enter the game.

POLIS

As an asset, POLIS is a low-velocity, long-term store-of-value that incentivizes governance of the ATLAS economy for its long-run production. The POLIS DAO is tasked with the minting, distribution, and redistribution of ATLAS within the ATLAS treasury, and earn portions of the returns in ATLAS to the developments they vote to fund.

With a long-term perspective, DAO governors will ultimately be able to drive the direction of Metaverse development. Even to the extent that the founding Star Atlas development team could be voted out as the primary vendor for game assets and game design. Other areas of more immediate focus include: economic revisions, feature releases, asset release schedules, and optionality to incorporate player-created content.

The total supply of POLIS is permanently fixed and does not increase.

POLIS can be acquired in the following ways:

• Primary Issuance: The Star Atlas team may directly sell POLIS tokens to potential governors

• Secondary Markets: Can be bought and sold on secondary markets, but come with a finite variety of lockup/vesting schedules

• In-game Rewards: Completing certain missions in-game

• Metagame Rewards:

  • Actively attracting new users that stay for some amount of time or generate some amount of value

  • Organize existing users into guilds/factions and more, based on what these guilds/factions produce

  • Guilds/Alliances will be rewarded with an amount of POLIS based on how long they have actively participated in the universe. The reward structure will be calibrated to disincentivize churn

• Governance Participation: Staking in the DAO and being active

• Meta-economics Rewards: Liquidity provision on AMMs and other DeFi entities

The total supply of the POLIS token is 360,000,000

The emission pool will be injected directly into the POLIS rewards pools via a smooth curve over 8 years, dropping the entire rewards pool over this time — unless the DAO rules otherwise (with a supermajority). The vision for the DAO interventions is that the organization will set semiannual targets based on the observed economic metrics which will adjust the dropping schedule accordingly.

ATLAS

ATLAS is the form of currency/income in the game. The market clears at the price at which the buy-side perceives the value of the production of in-game assets, as ATLAS can be earned within the game.

The currency is inflatable. The monetary mass should grow at roughly the same rate as the in-game economy.

New ATLAS is created to reward in-game activities.

The POLIS DAO can adjust the parameters regulating monetary rewards for different in-game activities, both on the global level and granularly, per activity type.

The total supply of the ATLAS token is 36,000,000,000.

The minting and burning of ATLAS will be purely based on game user-base growth and adoption. The Star Atlas supply and price will be kept on a level to maintain reasonable in-game asset pricing internally and optimize the entry level for new users, while allowing for appreciation externally.

The monetary policy of ATLAS will follow a route with three distinct phases

1. Discretionary (central bank). The development team adjusts the emission rates directly, using the developer’s DAO votes (as outlined in the DAO section) to modify the multipliers on in-game rewards of each type

   1. The target is to make the game accessible and optimal for growth of the user base, while providing a reasonable revenue for the POLIS holders

2. Discretionary (decentralized governance). The emission rates are still based on modifying the reward multipliers, but the developers’ votes are phased out, and the DAO takes control

3. Parametric (decentralized governance). The system is replaced with an algorithmic stabilization model that considers macroeconomic metrics and external token markets. This was done to set targets for the monetary mass, as well as to adjust rewards and burning accordingly. The model has to be enabled by a supermajority DAO vote, which will be parametric after deployment, with DAO being able to modify its KPIs