A tale about loyalty and crafting in the SA Metaverse
My Dear Readers,
I was expecting lots of things today, it’s Town Hall Friday after all, BUT the Star Atlas team decided to come in hot with a HUGE Alpha drop, which changed our perspectives about the ship crafting industry.
I have been itching to make an article about Crafting, so hopefully today we can ease that pain a bit by discussing How the different manufactures in Star Atlas will influence the acquisition of Blue Prints by the Ship Crafters.
As I told you guys I wasn’t going to publish anything today in wait for new information that would be discussed in the Town Hall, but if the Star Atlas team is working hard this penguin needs to get to his work as well!
Should you have already read the update you might want to go directly to the second part of the article where I share my insights about this new information.
Remember that nothing here is financial advice.
I hope you enjoy today’s article!
Star Atlas official Twitter page announced an update on the road map called Faction Aligned Companies (Public), with the following overview:
From there, the update starts telling us about each Manufacturer’s alliances and characteristics.
He starts by talking about how each of the main factions owns one main Manufacturer:
a) The MUD owns PEARCE
b) The ONI owns BUSAN
c) The Ustur owns VZUS
Then, the article starts explaining how the manufacturers will engage with players.
There will be a loyalty system, in which the players will be able to acquire reputation, through quests and missions, with the different manufacturers to acquire the blueprints of the said manufacturer ships.
Three important notes on this.
First, owning and trading proprietary ships across factions is unrestricted, but is still subject to transport and transaction fees.
Second, even if you are not aligned with the corresponding manufacturer faction, you will be able to acquire reputation if you have a faction pass for the said faction.
Third, the resources used in the proprietary blueprints are in higher abundance within the aligned faction region.
After explaining the three main manufacturers, the article proceeds into analyzing the duo faction manufacturers.
This category of manufacturers will have one major alignment and one minor alignment, if you belong to the faction with the major alignment you will be able to acquire reputation faster than if you are a member of the minor alignment faction.
Should you belong to the third faction with no alignment you will need a faction pass to acquire reputation. Find the list of alignments below:
a) USTUR: Major is Opal industries and Minor is Ogrika.
b)ONI: Major is Ogrika and Minor is Calico
c)MUD: Major is Calico and Minor is Opal
Finally, we have the four Independent manufacturers, which will be based in the medium and high-risk zones. It should be noted that any alignment with those minor independent manufacturers won’t influence their reputation with the faction’s manufacturers.
Let’s check what we know so far about the minor independent manufacturers:
The first one Jorvik (BYOS) which is described as a faction of outlaws and pirates plaguing the medium and high-risk zones.
Farming reputation with BYOS will require medium and high-risk zones gameplay (and the accruing of reputation will be higher in the higher-risk zones), and the resources used to their crafts will be spread across all regions.
There is also an interesting side note on this faction, check it out:
The second is ECOS industries, described as a faction of radicals who terraform via bombings in the medium and high-risk zones (lol). ECOS industries follow the same rules as Jorvik (BYOS) regarding acquiring reputation and resources for their crafts, except for the side note I dropped above.
The third is the TUFA, I’m not exactly sure they are an industry per se since they are described as a faction of metagenic creatures, the scourge of cataclysm (doesn’t sound too good, I don’t know tho).
Tufa also follows the same rules as those two above, with the exception that some of their resources are quite exotic and locked in the high-risk zone.
Finally, we have the Photoli, described as an ancient race of light-based creatures and source of extremely advanced technology. They have some different characteristics, check what the devs said!
Interesting! I think that the Photoli are up to no good (lore wise I mean!) We can discuss my reasons later sometime haha but, for now, that’s the data we have about this new update!
Did your brain start shaking with the possibilities and complexity that this adds to our future game? Yeah me too! that’s why it’s time to start analyzing what’s the impact of those revelations!
My two cents about the manufacturer’s update effects in our Metaverse
The update just dropped today, so we might have a few clarifications during the next few days. Nevertheless, I would like to share some of my deductions and insights about what we currently have.
Remember, at this point, it’s all speculation.
a) Gaining reputation with one faction will likely imply losing reputation with another.
My first impression is that the reputation quests that you make in favor of one of the manufacturers will, most likely, reduce your reputation with the other manufacturer.
Those quests will probably entail sabotage, resource stealing, attack on factories our data stealing, so yeah, the attacked industry will not like being harassed by the players and will deduct reputation from them.
b) Crafting will be a very specialized job and we will probably be specialized in one or max two different manufacturers
This is a conclusion from the first premise above, it will be very hard, if not impossible, to achieve a good enough reputation rank in two manufacturers to craft their ships.
The skill specialization system may make us go even deeper in our specialization, and each player may only be specialized in one kind of ship from one manufacturer, it all depends on how the progress mechanics will work.
Also, remember that it will not be easy to acquire an abundant type of resource from manufacturers outside of your faction influence region, so that’s another point to consider if you go into the crafting path.
c) Ship arbitrage will be a heavy game in Star Atlas
The division of manufacturers in zones of influence, especially since some of them will be in the medium and high-risk zones will create natural scarcity of certain ships into each faction zone.
Apart from the GAO Ships, it will be an ordeal for an Ustur to get Pearce ships, they will depend on the freighter’s capability of supplying them and, as we have seen in our logistic studies, the transport industry is subject to all kinds of supply disruptions.
This is very interesting because every big guild will look into diversifying their fleets; since every ship excels at some aspect, there will be plenty of arbitrage opportunities.
d) GAO Ships became even more important
This update makes the GAO ships even more important for the players; since as I stated above, it’s the only simple way to acquire a ship from a different faction.
Players might even want to buy ships from manufacturers not available to their factions and hold them until the game start to sell for profit for their factions colleagues.
e) The effect of this announcement in the Multi Faction Daos
One could argue that the big winners of this update are the Multi Faction Daos.
Theoretically, They will be able to develop giant supply chains to coordinate their factory’s efforts to make the market on the global demand of ships.
Let us say the premium for OPAL ships are high, they will stop producing ships from other manufacturers, which will lower those ship’s offers pn the market, and redirect their native resources to the opal factories to profit.
The thing is, MFD (Multi Faction Daos) are not monolithic organizations, far from it!
I’m pretty sure that one of the branches of the organization might not be happy to sell their raw supplies for a cheap price for another branch to profit.
I foresee that MFD will need HUGE HR INFRASTRUCTURE and experienced leadership in all tiers of governance for those organization’s viability in this ever-growing complexity.
It will not be easy to accommodate the conflict of interest between different factions branch members when the game was set up for faction conflict and war.
I advise against building a MFD if you don’t have the experience and resources to make it work.
F) Crafting ships will probably require a group effort from your guild
Remember that crafting is not like fighting, you don’t buy a crafting ship and level it up just playing, you will need to expend money and efforts into acquiring blueprints, raw materials, and the structural costs of developing your craft.
Also, probably you will not make money until you have a good level of crafting, since the level-up system will make your crafting more resource-efficient.
So a good solution is discussing with your friends how crafting is going to work in your guild, especially after we have more information, and try to focus your efforts and resources into one or two person craft, so they can pay back the guild investment on their professional development costs.
Closing notes
I liked this announcement! Hopefully, they will also announce the confirmed date of Polis Staking and we will have much content to analyze in the following weeks!
I thank you all for keeping up with my work as usual! I have been very happy to read your messages here on medium, Twitter, and discord! Feel free to send me suggestions, critiques, or messages in general!
Let us meet today at the town hall later!
See you all my noots! Drink Water!