SAGE the AI joins SAGE the game: Star Atlas adds a guide for its next C4 test

In Brief:

• Star Atlas (official site) has confirmed that an AI helper named SAGE will assist players through a forthcoming C4 playtest inside Star Atlas: Golden Era.
• Since late May, C4 has lived on a public test realm powered by the z.ink testnet, and July’s Phase Two brought Combat V2, the Nemesis Engine and Cultivation Claims into the mix.
• ATMTA intends to lock in a mainnet date as soon as Phase 3 is ready, followed by a 30 to 45 day campaign that spans C4, the z.ink genesis event, token listings and DeFi integrations.

For the next stretch of C4 testing, Star Atlas is placing an AI assistant directly in players’ hands.

“Let SAGE (AI) help you navigate the stars in our upcoming C4 playtest, in Star Atlas: Golden Era,” read the studio’s post on X, which pointed to sage.staratlas.com.

That acronym is carrying two jobs at once. SAGE refers to the game itself, Star Atlas: Golden Era, and SAGE is equally the label given to the assistant the studio expects testers to rely on.

Where the assistant came from

Holosim was the AI’s first appearance, the free-to-play flavor of SAGE Labs, where it welcomes players at holosim.staratlas.com and steers them through building a character and picking a faction. The studio frames it as a personal assistant trained on Star Atlas material, targeted primarily at newcomers. Arriving with it were Route Manager automation tools and a tutorial system.

AI companions have been on ATMTA’s roadmap since the studio teamed up with the ASI Alliance and SingularityNET, the organization founded by Dr. Ben Goertzel. Part of that agreement covered “Virtual Companions,” characterized back then as the groundwork for AI assistants that back up players.

What C4 already is

Following a closed beta, the C4 public test realm opened in late May during a town hall, hosted on the z.ink testnet that had launched a week earlier. No SAGE update has been larger; it represents roughly eighteen months of development and the studio’s first significant product release in two years.

With C4, SAGE becomes a complete 4X title. That means exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination, alongside PvE and PvP adversaries and a diplomatic layer sitting above the more basic Starbased build.

July’s Phase Two arrived carrying six features. Fighting was overhauled by Combat V2. On-chain NPCs run on the Nemesis Engine, beginning with Jorvik, which establishes a permanent hostile presence and lays the foundation for piracy and resource transfers. Unique resources come from Cultivation Claims, feeding stimulant production inside the game. Filling out the set: a Democracy Module handling localized governance, zXP support and a Goal system.

Jorvik’s opening pirate fleets arrived on the PTR not long ago. Testing hasn’t yet opened up on the Democracy Module, though, the feature allowing players to set Starbase fees and take in revenue. According to ATMTA chief executive Michael, it should show up “pretty soon.”

Economy still being tuned

At present C4 includes over 100 mineable resources along with about 5,600 recipe combinations. Michael has indicated a preference for trimming the Safe Zone resource pool down considerably, nearer to Starbased levels, so that players head into the Medium Risk Zone for everything else. That remains his design preference rather than a finalized call.

He also sorted out the naming confusion. SAGE Labs and SAGE Starbased have been dropped, with the team now referring to the perpetual browser game as just SAGE, given that “SAGE C4” serves only as the project name.

Phase 3 and the road to mainnet

In Phase 3, cNFT crew get bridged over to z.ink as Token-2022 NFTs usable in trainable missions. José, whose remit covers lore and community, has walked through the back-end interface used to construct those missions, which can be attached per region, system or planet, restricted by local conditions or earlier completions, and configured with required payment assets and rewards handed out in XP, ATLAS, resources and components.

ATMTA’s plan is to fix the mainnet date once Phase 3 is finished, kicking off a 30 to 45 day launch campaign that covers C4, the z.ink genesis event, token listings and DeFi integrations. Michael put mainnet roughly two to three months away.

As for z.ink, it’s an identity-linked SVM Layer 1 constructed by the Star Atlas team. Public testnet already hosts the network, bridge and developer documentation, and validator, RPC and hardware partners are being sought. September is the target for the start of airdrop season.

Jacob, who serves as the studio’s chief technology officer, described bridges as some of the largest security risks facing the industry. Live testing is available on the z.ink bridge, but it sits in a testnet phase instead of being production-hardened. The team is weighing a bug bounty; funding an external audit isn’t something Jacob said they’re in a position to do.

Over on the play portal, the message hasn’t changed: “PUBLIC TEST ACTIVE · C4 SYSTEMS LOADING.”