A New Release on the Horizon — Star Atlas Crew Packs Coming in Q2 2024

Published in

Star Atlas

8 min readMay 11, 2024

In one of our most significant expansions yet, we proudly present Crew Packs — a unique collection of Galia inhabitants, coming to Star Atlas in Q2/2024. Millions of crew members with unique names, unique backstories, and rolled aptitudes will be deployed into the Star Atlas universe. Crew cards can be used as your in-game avatar, your ship’s crew, crafting personnel and be used in our mobile companion app releasing later this year. Run and enjoy our special pre-sale deal to get the Platinum Presale 10 Card Pack for a discount today!

The Crew — Everything You Need to Know to Assemble the Greatest Group the Galaxy Has Ever Seen

What are Crew Packs?

Crew Packs are the next addition to our gaming ecosystem, featuring unique, randomly generated crew members that unlock new game mechanics through SAGE Starbased and beyond.

Players can acquire followers with diverse traits, personalities, and skills to support their fleets and infrastructures. They will also become your in-game avatars, allowing you to perform the various gameplay loops and ultimately affecting your efficiency in them as new game expansions introduce crew progression systems and careers.

Finally, crew members are categorized into rarity tiers, similar to Star Atlas’ ship rarity system, from common to anomaly tier. Higher rarity crew members are granted aptitudes in increased quantity and power, allowing them to gain experience faster in their areas of expertise.

Natural Talents and Tendencies — The Different Aptitudes

Talking about gameplay elements, let’s dive into something our captains are surely eager to know about: The different areas of expertise, or as they are known in-game, aptitudes that their crew can specialize in.

There are seven different crew aptitudes guiding your crew members’ innate talents and abilities development:

Command: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to the Admiral, Commander, and Captain’s roles.
Flight: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to the Navigator and Pilot’s role.
Engineering: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to Engineering roles.
Medical: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to Medical roles.
Scientist: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to Science roles.
Operator: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to the Weapons Operator, Drone Operator, and Rig Operator roles.
Hospitality: This aptitude increases the crew’s experience gained when assigned to various support roles such as: Chef, Mixologist, Entertainer, Clerical Officer, Security, Manager, Foreman, and Janitor.

It goes without saying that having crew members with natural aptitudes linked with your fleet specialization and composition is a huge positive factor in the success of your galactic endeavors, so make sure to pay attention to how you choose your talent!

A Tale of Genius and Ordinary Folks — The Different Rarity Tiers of Crew Members and Its Importance

Crew members are divided into rarity tiers that mirror Star Atlas’ overall ship rarity system, ranging from common crew members to anomaly-tier followers. The rarer your crew is, the more diverse and potent their aptitudes are, gaining experience points at a flat rate faster.

You can see the different aptitude bonuses that each crew rarity tier has in the image below:

As you can see, higher-rarity crew members have the advantage of filling more efficiently different in-game roles due to their many and more intense aptitudes. Nevertheless, it is important not to underestimate common crew members in well-placed positions. Strategy, patience, and hard work may very well overcome talent!

Get To Work! — The Different Utilities For Crew Members Now and In The Future

The deployment of crew members in Star Atlas’ gaming ecosystem brings immediate new use cases and forms the basis for many future gaming mechanics.

As soon as you acquire your crew member, you will also get a new worker to perform crafting jobs in the Star Atlas SAGE Starbased game, allowing you to pump your supply chain efficiency in-game. Also, the crew art serves as your Star Atlas Player Profile Picture (PFP), allowing you to represent your favorite species and faction both inside and outside our ecosystem.

Nevertheless, crew members truly shine as the next in-game expansions are delivered. Players will be able to use them as their in-game avatars once we deploy the Unreal Engine 5 R2.2 release later this year and use them to crew their own spaceships, all while training them and collecting gear, RPG style, through our mobile app, which is also coming in the 2024 updates.

As we progress more in the development, players can expect a fully developed MMO RPG system in which your crew, with their progression systems, skills, and career paths, are central to the game dynamics of the Star Atlas metaverse.

A Universe of Unique Species — Introducing The People Of Galia Expanse

In addition to having unique aptitudes, names, and abilities, each crew card belongs to a different species of Galia Expanse, which impacts their background stories, producing a unique story for each crew member. See the list of species below and try to form your crew with members that reflect your in-game values and aspirations!

Sogmians — An Honorable species hailing from the Segal Sector, known for their bravery, discipline, and stoic nature. They are recognized as champions of virtue and honor throughout Galia Expanse.
Mierese — A curious species of hunters coming from the living planet Neuno, the Mierese seeks both adventure and secrets while exploring the uncharted territories of Galia. They believe in decentralization, personal autonomy, and self-fulfillment in their quest to save their entrapped God.
Punaabs — The materialistic and carefree sons of Akenat, the small Punaabs live in eternal bickering between their species’ main branches, the Profound and High Punaabs. Nevertheless, those tiny creatures have shown great heart and incredible intellect, allowing them to build incredible enterprises through the stars.
Usturs — A highly spiritualized race of androids with unclear origins and unique conditions, such as the existence of a shared conscience led by a group of their elders and a mysterious reincarnation system. The Usturs unveil the vastness of the void, seeking answers to the secrets within their hybrid bodies.
Manus Ultima Divina (MUD) — The representation of mankind who have left the carcass of planet Earth following God’s calling to a promised destiny amidst the stars. The MUD now seek to rebuild their civilization and prepare themselves for another incursion to find the paradise that they are entitled to.
Photoli — Mighty beings that come from outside Galia. The Photoli are mighty creatures with the power to manipulate the essence of light and are revered as Gods by some lesser civilizations. Their objectives and motives are unknown to other species, making them objects of reverence and fear throughout the galaxy (Only obtainable through Anomaly tier Crew drops!)
Tufa — The scourge of the Cataclysm, as they are known in popular folklore, the tufas are little more than a myth nowadays, as the people of Galia have mostly forgotten the Convergence War and the secrets of the rogue planet Iris. Nevertheless, it is said that some special members of the “rocky people” with the ability to communicate wander through the galaxy, hiding their identities and working in secret for unknown plots. True or not, the topic is passionately discussed in every bar of the medium zone. (Only obtainable through Anomaly tier Crew drops!)

Now that we understand the crew members well, let’s explore how to acquire them to assemble your fleets!

Crew Pack Airdrop — Your Ship Crew is Coming!

The first way to acquire crew members is by receiving an airdrop of Singular Crew Packs by owning Star Atlas ships. Depending on how much crew your ship is slotted for, you’ll receive a Crew Pack airdrop matching that one-to-one.

The tier of these individual crew packs depends on the rarity of your ships:

Common and Uncommon ships — Silver singular crew packs
Rare and Epic ships — Gold singular crew packs
Legendary and Anomaly ships — Platinum singular crew packs

Let us understand this better through an example. If Dominic owns a “rare” ship like the Pearce F4, he will receive Gold-tier individual crew packs corresponding to the ship’s crew size. Since the F4 has four crew members (1 pilot, 1 navigator, and 2 security officers), Dominic will end up getting four crew cards airdropped to him.

But fear not! If you don’t have one of the mighty vessels of Star Atlas, you can start collecting your own crew directly by purchasing the standard Crew Packs.

Prices and Probabilities — The Mathematics Behind Crews and Packs

There are three types of Crew Packs: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Each pack contains 5 crew cards of varying rarity among the various Star Atlas species. The prices and odds of crew drops associated with each one of the packs are detailed in the following image:

Once Crew Packs go live, you will be able to purchase them directly on our marketplace, each priced as follows:

Silver Pack: 25 USDC
Gold Pack: 37.50 USDC
Platinum Pack: 50 USDC

To announce this special release, we are offering a limited-time pre-sale of Platinum Packs. Players can immediately acquire a Platinum Presale 10 Card Pack for 90 USDC, offering the highest chance of obtaining rare crew members at a discounted price. Go directly to our website, and don’t miss out on this opportunity to form your crew and dominate the Star Atlas universe!

ABOUT STAR ATLAS

Star Atlas is a next-gen gaming metaverse emerging from the confluence of state-of-the-art blockchain technologies, real-time graphics and multiplayer video games.

Using Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite real-time graphics technology allows for cinematic quality video game visuals. In addition, blockchain technology using Solana establishes a largely serverless and secured gameplay experience. Player assets obtained and traded within Star Atlas create an economy that replicates tangible world assets and ownership.

To learn more, join a faction at Play.StarAtlas.com, get a spaceship in the Galactic Marketplace, and start playing the SAGE Starbased browser game to explore, gather, craft and prosper on the galactic frontier.

Then, download the UE5 PC Game from the Epic Games Store.

Participate in governance of the Star Atlas DAO. Send your spaceships on a deep space mission by enrolling them in a Faction Fleet and harvest resources with Faction Claims.