1. Stellaris
  2. News

Stellaris News

Stellaris 4.3 "Cetus" Open Beta now available

[p][/p][p]Hello everyone!

We would like to thank you in advance for your interest in participating in the 4.3 "Cetus" Open Beta, which we are internally referring to as "The Reckoning". This update will attempt to scale back the Economic and Naval power creep in Stellaris - not necessarily to 3.14 levels - but to a new level we feel is good for the future of the game.

Some things that are important to note:
[/p]
  • [p]This is a Work-In-Progress Open Beta, you may find bugs or other issues that should be reported on the Bug Report forums (be sure you include version number, checksum and a save game or screenshot demonstrating the issue)[/p]
  • [p]Disable your mods (including UI mods)[/p]
  • [p]Do not start from a non-beta (pre-existing) save[/p]
  • [p]None of these changes are considered final, and we will continue to iterate on the changes based on Community Feedback[/p]
[h3]4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta Patch Notes 2025-12-11[/h3][h3]Balance​[/h3]
  • [p]The Dimensional Fleet Astral Action has been adjusted to the reduced general fleet sizes.[/p]
    • [p]Summons a number of Escorts equal to the number of Astral Rifts you have explored, and Cruisers equal to half that number, rounded down.[/p]
  • [p]Ship Naval Capacity usage has changed significantly.[/p]
    • [p]Corvettes: 5[/p]
    • [p]Frigates: 8[/p]
    • [p]Destroyers: 10[/p]
    • [p]Cruisers: 20[/p]
    • [p]Battleships: 40[/p]
    • [p]Titans and Bio-Titans: 80[/p]
    • [p]Juggernauts and Colossi: 100[/p]
    • [p]Maulers: 4/6/8[/p]
    • [p]Weavers: 8/12/16[/p]
    • [p]Harbingers: 16/24/32[/p]
    • [p]Stingers: 32/48/64[/p]
    • [p]Most ships (including Space Fauna and Event Ships) in general have 5x the Naval Capacity usage they used to.[/p]
      • [p]Nanite Swarmers are size 1[/p]
      • [p]TODO: Teeth of the Eater will likely take Naval Cap while you are not at war.[/p]
      • [p]Increased base and modified Vivarium capacity to work with new numbers[/p]
      • [p]Galactic Nemesis Marauding ships have 20% less naval capacity usage than their size would normally require. (Corvettes: 4, Destroyers: 8, Cruisers: 16)[/p]
  • [p]Titan Perdition Beams and Ancient Ruination Glare now deal collateral damage to other ships.[/p]
  • [p]Armor and Shields have been rebalanced, and now higher tiers also add a small amount of Armor or Shield Hardening as appropriate.[/p]
    • [p]These grant (tier - 1)% Armor or Shield Hardening[/p]
  • [p]Higher tier Ship and Component costs and upkeep have generally been increased.[/p]
  • [p]Crystal Hull plating now also grants flat damage reduction.[/p]
    • [p]Crystal-Infused Plating:[/p]
      • [p]S: 50 Hull, -1 Damage[/p]
      • [p]M: 150 Hull, -2 Damage[/p]
      • [p]L: 450 Hull, -4 Damage[/p]
    • [p]Crystal-Forged Plating:[/p]
      • [p]S: 100 Hull, -2 Damage[/p]
      • [p]M: 300 Hull, -4 Damage[/p]
      • [p]L: 900 Hull, -8 Damage[/p]
  • [p]Frigates are now faster and sturdier, moving at Destroyer speed instead of Cruiser, have +1 Utility and Aux Slot, and use Destroyer sized reactors[/p]
  • [p]Base Hull for ships have been adjusted.[/p]
  • [p]The multiplicative damage bonus Torpedoes and Torpedo-like weapons gain has been reduced to 20% of their former values because ship sizes are 5x larger. (Effectively no change.) The maximum bonus has been increased.[/p]
  • [p]Many sources of Empire Size modifiers have been reduced.[/p]
    • [p]The base amount of Empire Size generated by pops has been halved.[/p]
      • [p]Especially things that reduce Empire Size from Pops down to 0.[/p]
    • [p]The base amount of Empire Size generated by colonies has been increased to 20.[/p]
  • [p]Effects and modifiers that granted jobs per pop have been replaced with static job numbers.[/p]
  • [p]After a review of Unemployment mechanics, we felt that they did not add significantly to the game.[/p]
    • [p]All unemployed pops now demote to Civilian (or Maintenance Drone, as appropriate) at the end of the month.[/p]
    • [p]Removed the "Rising Unemployment" event chain.[/p]
    • [p]Living Standards have been adjusted.[/p]
      • [p]All living standards now include information for Slaves, just in case you find some way to get them unusual and unexpected standards like Utopian Abundance.[/p]
      • [p]Happiness penalties on lower living standards now apply to Civilians.[/p]
    • [p]Removed Demotion Time bonuses as they’re no longer relevant.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced most job-based sources of research, but also reduced tech costs by half. This indirectly improves space-based deposits.[/p]
    • [p]Many buildings and modifiers that increased job output have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Most stability bonuses have been reduced to one half to one third of their previous values.[/p]
    • [p]The intention of this change is to make Stability generally more important and harder to pin at 100, and make things like +1 or +2 Stability effects more valuable.[/p]
  • [p]Most job efficiency modifiers have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Some production modifiers have been turned into job efficiency modifiers.[/p]
  • [p]Ethics Changes:[/p]
    • [p]Authoritarian:[/p]
      • [p]Worker Production bonus is now Worker Job Efficiency.[/p]
    • [p]Egalitarian[/p]
      • [p]Specialist Production bonus is now Specialist Job Efficiency.[/p]
    • [p]Pacifist[/p]
      • [p]Reduced Empire Size from Pops bonus to -10%/-20%.[/p]
  • [p]Many sources of Unity production have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Bubbles (and other misnamed variants) no longer uses up Naval Capacity[/p]
  • [p]Many traits that reduced Housing usage have been rebalanced.[/p]
  • [p]Increased base naval capacity to 40[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced Naval Capacity techs[/p]
  • [p]Increased the power usage of Torpedoes and Energy Torpedoes on standard ships[/p]
  • [p]Colony Designations now universally add Job Efficiency to their appropriate Jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Planetary Ascension now increases the Designation effect by 10% per tier instead of 25%.[/p]
  • [p]Obsessional Directive now grants +15% Artisan Drone Job Efficiency, and increased Consumer Goods storage. The Commodities Consolidation situation now grants Artisan Drone Job Efficiency and adds Unity production to Artisans (instead of all Unity).[/p]
  • [p]Ascension situations now progress slower.[/p]
    • [p]Exceptions: Synthetic Fertility and Endbringers. Tick-tock.[/p]
  • [p]Resettlement costs are now the same across all strata. (Since demotion is now immediate at the end of the month, this prevents an undesired element of micromanagement where you would want to fire any pops you wanted to resettle.)[/p]
  • [p]Anchorages now give +5 Naval Capacity, +3 with a Naval Logistics Office.[/p]
  • [p]Special planetary deposits are now 4x more common.[/p]
  • [p]The Subterranean Contact Zone now provides job swaps for traders or logistic drones.[/p]
  • [p]Removed inappropriate researcher jobs from planetary features which provided them.[/p]
  • [p]Made some unique planetary features more interesting.[/p]
  • [p]Subsidy Edicts now grant +20% or 10% Efficiency and +0.5 Trade Upkeep[/p]
  • [p]Readjusted bonuses from Genesis Guides civics[/p]
    • [p]Halved the modifiers from the Genesis Preserves[/p]
    • [p]Added an on action to remove the Preserves if you reform your government[/p]
    • [p]Reduced rewards from colonising from 500 Unity and 25 Influence to 250 Unity and 5 Influence[/p]
    • [p]Reduced rewards from uplifting from 1000 unity to 250 Unity and 5 Influence[/p]
    • [p]Ensured that a Genesis Preserve is created only if one does not already exist.[/p]
    • [p]Unity from Jobs modifier from the Genesis Monument is decreased to 10% if you don't have the civic[/p]
    • [p]Updated various checks to check for all variants of the civic instead of just the version for regular individualist empires[/p]
    • [p]Set the strata for newly spawned pre-sapients to actually be pre-sapient instead of No Category[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted some more upkeep reductions on buildings to match the new economic model.[/p]
  • [p]More strategic resource production has been moved to the strategic resource producing district specializations. Significantly reduced the amount given for free by the strategic resource deposits without the specialization.[/p]
  • [p]Tankbound Production Overseers now generate 2 Engineering Research instead of Unity, and grant +2% efficiency and +200 Amenities. They are only granted by Urban districts (or as Clerk swaps).[/p]
  • [p]Automation Building Changes:[/p]
    • [p]Assembly Patterns and Construction Templates are now Tier 2 and 4 technologies.[/p]
    • [p]Automation Buildings are now job specific, and no longer increase their upkeep based on district count.[/p]
      • [p]Automated Worker or Simple Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 4 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
      • [p]Automated Specialist or Complex Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 8 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
      • [p]Automated Elite Jobs increase their upkeep by 12 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Fallen Empire Buildings:[/p]
    • [p]Are now Planet Limit 1 and automate 25% or 50% of relevant Specialist jobs or 75% or 100% of relevant Worker jobs. These are the only sources of Specialist automation in the new economic system.[/p]
      • [p]Exceptions:[/p]
        • [p]Dimensional Replicator now produces 10 of each Strategic Resource, Dimensional Fabricator now produces 25 of each Strategic Resource and 5 of each Rare Resource[/p]
        • [p]Sky Dome / Empyrean Dome, Shrinkspace Depot / Extra-Dimensional Depot functionality remains the same.[/p]
    • [p]Adjusted costs, upkeep, and build times of Fallen Empire buildings.[/p]
  • [p]Fallen Empires now gain +100% Automated Workforce Efficiency[/p]
    • [p]Awakened Empires gain an additional +500% Automated Workforce Efficiency[/p]
  • [p]Soldiers are now Specialist (or Complex Drone) jobs with 1 Alloy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Polytechnic Mentors now grant Miners engineering research. The bonuses they grant have been reduced to +0.1.[/p]
  • [p]Naval Capacity:[/p]
    • [p]Naval Capacity values adjusted.[/p]
    • [p]Anchorages now have Trade Upkeep equal to the Naval Capacity they are providing.[/p]
  • [p]The Nano-Corpses deposit now yields alloys, not rare crystals.[/p]
  • [p]The Mountain in the Sky deposit from the Gravity Storm has been rebalanced, but allows construction of a unique district specialization.[/p]
  • [p]The Aquaculture district specialization now provides 50 jobs of each type, not 75.[/p]
  • [p]Anglers no longer produce additional food.[/p]
  • [p]Anglers and Pearl Divers are now swapped on wet worlds, regardless of district specializations.[/p]
  • [p]Factions have 50% reduced output during the first ten years of the game (when factions normally do not exist).[/p]
  • [p]Parliamentary System now grants +20% Faction Output but has +50% disapproval for unmet demands.[/p]
  • [p]Increased base Unity production of empires from 5 to 10.[/p]
  • [p]Civics that provide politician job swaps (Technocracy, Merchant Guilds, Exalted Priesthood) now provide additional jobs to relevant buildings.[/p]
  • [p]Overtuned origin no longer has early access to genetic ascension.[/p]
  • [p]The bonus pop growth and amenities provided by Genomic Researcher jobs from selecting Cloning traditions and choices during Biomorphosis have been moved to the Genomic Research Facility building. The amount of amenities granted has been increased to 500.[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced all council positions that gave flat resources to jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Dark Consortium Civic now has a beefier Dark Matter Deposit on game start.[/p]
  • [p]Pass on Edicts. Many now affect Efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Knights are now considered Soldiers instead of Bureaucrats and Researchers.[/p]
  • [p]Strong, Very Strong, and Weak traits now also affect Soldier efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted effects of Commander and Scientist governors.[/p]
  • [p]Battle Thralls now get a bonus to Soldier efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Disruptors now start with 50% shield and armor bypass at tier 1 which increases to 80% at Psionic Disruptors. They now also deal +25% damage against shields.[/p]
  • [p]Increased Unity production and Consumer Goods upkeep of Politicians.[/p]
  • [p]Commander Starting Level civics: Swapped Commander XP Gain for Commander Upkeep Reduction on Distinguished Admiralty. Added Commander Upkeep Reduction to Warbots and Strength of Legions.[/p]
  • [p]Machine Capital Buildings (tier 2 or higher) now also add Coordinator jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced the power of the council positions for Chosen civics.[/p]
  • [p]The Corporate Authority now has +1 Envoy instead of +1 External Leader Pool.[/p]
  • [p]Clustered Capacity (Virtuality) now gives +75% Virtual Pop Job Eff and -10% per Colony. (Was +175%, -25% per Colony)[/p]
  • [p]Cybernetic Traits no longer have energy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]The Cybernetic and Limited Cybernetic traits now swap half of the base food (or equivalent) upkeep for energy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Media Conglomerate now gives early access to factions, but replaces faction unity output with trade output.[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced many species traits[/p]
    • [p]Erudite[/p]
      • [p]+30% Researcher job efficiency -> +20% Researcher job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Fertile:[/p]
      • [p]+30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Vat Grown:[/p]
      • [p]+33% Organic Pop Assembly -> +25% Organic Pop Assembly[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Existential Iteroparity[/p]
      • [p]+30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Numistic Administration:[/p]
      • [p]+33% Trader job efficiency -> +25% Trader job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Dark Matter Engines[/p]
      • [p]+40% job efficiency -> +20% job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Dark Matter -> 0.03 Dark Matter[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Living Metal Augmentations[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Living Metal -> 0.03 Living Metal[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Biomimetic Assembly:[/p]
      • [p]+50% Replicator job efficiency -> +20% Replicator job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Matrix Trading[/p]
      • [p]+50% Trade job efficiency -> +20% Trade job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Rare Crystals -> 0.02 Rare Crystals[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Mote-Powered Tools[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Volatile Motes -> 0.02 Volatile Motes[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Exotic Fuel Consumption[/p]
      • [p]+10% job efficiency -> +10% Specialist & Complex Drone job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the next trait[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.04 Exotic Gases -> 0.05 Exotic Gases[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Volatile Mote Reactor[/p]
      • [p]+30% Habitability -> +10% Worker & Menial Drone job efficiency[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the previous trait[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Volatile Motes -> 0.05 Volatile Motes[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous trait[/p]
    • [p]Rare Crystal Exterior[/p]
      • [p]+20% Metallurgist job efficiency -> +30% Habitability[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Flavour text makes this more appropriate for habitability[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Rare Crystals -> 0.05 Rare Crystals[/p]
        • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous traits[/p]
  • [p]The Arcology Project and districts on Ecumenopoleis now cost alloys instead of minerals[/p]
  • [p]Partial pass done for some advanced authorities. These will continue in future Open Beta drops.[/p]
    • [p]Dictatorial Cybervision now grants a flat Cyborg job efficiency bonus and scaling Stability for Enforcers.[/p]
    • [p]Physiological Transcendency now gives +2 Unity per 100 Politician jobs instead of +3 Unity per 100 Elite pops.[/p]
    • [p]Dictatorial Cybervision and Homogenous Submission now give Governing Ethics Attraction instead of Authoritarian ethics attraction.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced difficulty based scaling on the Grey Tempest and Khan. Roaming Tempest fleets may not always have a Mothership on lower difficulties. (Garrison fleets are unchanged.)[/p]
[h3]Bugfix​[/h3]
  • [p]Removed remaining references to pre-4.0 strategic resource harvesting jobs that were converted into job swaps.[/p]
[h3]AI​[/h3]
  • [p]AI empires will now prefer to have three or fewer underdeveloped colonies before colonizing the next one. (Underdeveloped is defined as having under 1000 pops.)[/p]
[h3]UI​[/h3]
  • [p]When using Observer mode, Mercenary Enclaves no longer appear in the regular empire list, they're at the end classified as "Minors"[/p]
  • [p]Unemployment information in the central bar of the planet view has been replaced with information on planet Denizens (Civilians or Maintenance Drones)[/p]
[h3]Modding​[/h3]
  • [p]Added faction_demands_met_mult and faction_demands_unmet_mult which affect faction approval or disapproval of met or unmet demands.[/p]
[p]
Where to leave your feedback?

We’d like feedback on what you think of these changes. Where have we gone too hard, what do you like, what have we missed, and so on. As I’ve mentioned, this is still an early build and we’ll be iterating on it until it releases. If (and when) you find something that’s grossly out of line with the rest of the game balance, let us know so we make sure it’s looked at.

Is the challenge level appropriate? Are there more sliders that we should add to galaxy generation, or changes we should make to the base game difficulties?

We've done up a feedback form so that we can get everyone's feedback in the one place, you can find it here.

Please note: This feedback form will be changed for each Open Beta update to ensure we're getting the latest information. Feel free to fill it out every time it comes out.

How to Opt-In

We just put the first part of the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta branch up on Steam as "cetus_open_beta". We plan to update this branch again next week.

To access a Stellaris beta, go to your Steam Library, right-click the game, and select "Properties". From there, choose the "Betas" tab, and in the "Beta Participation" dropdown menu, select the "cetus_open_beta" beta branch from the list.

Thank you for playing Stellaris, and thank you in advance for your feedback on the upcoming changes for Stellaris 4.3 "Cetus"!

[/p][hr][/hr][p]
A Note for Linux Users:

The Linux binary at the moment requires a openssl 4 enabled version of curl, this is not provided by Steams base environment, we are currently addressing this.
You can either try and run Stellaris directly if your system has this provided for you or use proton to run the windows version

Run Stellaris directly:
[/p]
  1. [p]Right click Stellaris in Steam and select "Properties..."[/p]
  2. [p]Goto "Installed Files" tab and select "Browse..." (this should take you to where Stellaris is installed)[/p]
  3. [p]Find the file "stellaris" and double click it[/p]
[p]Run thru Proton:
[/p]
  1. [p]Right click Stellaris in Steam and select "Properties..."[/p]
  2. [p]Goto "Compatability" tab and tick the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" checkbox[/p]
  3. [p]Select "Proton 10.0-3" or a suitable version ( https://www.protondb.com/app/281990 for help)[/p]
  4. [p]Update the game and press "Play" in steam[/p]

Stellaris Dev Diary #407 - The 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta

[p][/p][p]Hello everyone!

4.2.4 ‘Corvus’ is in certification and may have been released by the time this goes live, with the following changes:[/p][h3]4.2.4 ‘Corvus’ Release Notes[/h3][p]Balance​[/p]
  • [p]+25% volcanic world habitability for machine climate preference traits to match their minimum habitability value on Volcanic worlds.[/p]
  • [p]Replaced Food output for some specimens with one quarter as Alloy output bonus for Infernals.[/p]
  • [p]Slightly lower Unity and Research rewards for several events in the Red Giant and Cosmic Dawn Origins.[/p]
[p]Bugfix​[/p]
  • [p]The Payback origin now get the correct starting buildings as Materialist and Spiritualist[/p]
  • [p]The trait Propaganda Machines now shows the correct modifier[/p]
  • [p]When transferring planets under colonization after a war is on, if the colonizing species isn't allowed to colonize the colony is destroyed (stops forever colonization where you keep sending the new colons to the slave pits)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed leaders losing ascension related traits after species modification in some cases.[/p]
  • [p]The tooltip for Permanent Employment Civic's Reassigners say they use "Food (or equivalent)", implying they use Alloys when you are Thermophile.[/p]
  • [p]Ringworld construction and other binary/trinary restrictions correctly apply in binary or trinary hyperthermia systems.[/p]
  • [p]Replaced minor additional food upkeep for hive mind unity boosting buildings with extra Alloy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed infernal Alloy upkeep for Voidling, purging, and non-sapient pops.[/p]
  • [p]Voidworm Troika designs can be saved.[/p]
  • [p]Voidworm Troikas are no longer created without upgrades when three large voidworms combine.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed some issues with machine empires, catalytic processing and alloy producing jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed stuck in combat when the defender refuses to actually do combat.[/p]
  • [p]Volcanic Districts now improve tech weights.[/p]
  • [p]Preventing evasion to go negative from evasion against psionic modifier in combat calculation.[/p]
  • [p]Fixing abduction code setting the species correctly when checking if species can live on planet.[/p]
[p]Performance​[/p]
  • [p]Optimized string allocation in ship component modifier processing.[/p]
[p]Stability​[/p]
  • [p]Fixed random CTD with invalid ships[/p]
  • [p]Changed stack allocation to heap in particle varied values to avoid CTD:ing[/p]
  • [p]Fixed CTD due to race condition between UI and AI accessing base growth cache.[/p]
  • [p]OOS fix: Planet species caches are now stored in arrays instead of unordered sets or maps"[/p]
[p]UI​[/p]
  • [p]Shows the 25% Minimum Habitability on Volcanic worlds for Mechanical and Machine pops[/p]
[p]But that’s not the only release planned for today![/p][h3]4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta​[/h3][p]As I mentioned last week, this Open Beta is very compartmentalized so we will have the option to pick and choose different aspects to bring to the final release. This first content drop of the Cetus Open Beta includes only a partial set of Economic and Naval Change branches on top of a 4.2 base.

If all goes according to plan, 4.3 will be released to the live branches during the first quarter of 2026, but if we deem that it’s not ready yet, we’re planning to keep it in beta for longer. It’s also possible that we’ll choose to release some elements in 4.3 and then continue with a 4.4 Open Beta with the things that still need more work or polish.

The economic changes in 4.0 brought a high level of customization to planets and introduced ways of optimizing your production that did not exist before, leading to much stronger overall results. Coupled with the power creep of the Ascension expansions, empires were able to create fleets that dwarfed the end game fleets of 3.x by the mid-game.

The changes in this beta seek to ratchet that power level back significantly, restricting most sources of non-linear economic growth, in order to bring us to a more balanced level overall. Our pass is not yet complete, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find some civics, traits, or other sources that we haven’t gotten to yet - that’s okay, but expect that when we’re done we’ll have adjusted those as well. Some other changes are still in a work-in-progress state, waiting for some code support to make them work the way we want them to. Helping us find things that we may have missed or display excessive synergies and highlighting them will be very helpful.

Internally, we nicknamed this branch “The Reckoning” before it got its constellation name, since the fifty weeks of being overpowered were coming to an end.[/p][p][/p][h3]Cetus Design Goals and Philosophy​[/h3][p]We’re not trying to recreate the economic level of 3.x in this branch - we’re looking for where the baseline of the 4.x economy should be. We believe that this is at a level that is much lower than the 4.0-4.2 level, and that there are parts of Stellaris that haven’t been an interesting challenge for quite a long time. There’s not much incentive in doing a special project to pacify hostile Space Fauna, for instance, if an early game fleet can casually erase them from existence.

We wanted to reduce the number of ships in the game to both improve performance and to make the ships you have feel more valuable. If you have 20 full fleets moving around in a doomstack, each individual battleship you may have is just another number.

A popular mod multiplies the power and cost of ships to improve performance. It did accomplish both of those goals, but we desired a system that we believed would better fit both early and late game. We came to the conclusion that as long as the changes were consistent across the entire playing field, the economy and ships did not absolutely necessitate equal power increases to achieve the desired results. Economic output and fleet power will be significantly lower than what you’re used to, and some things that were previously trivial threats may now be a real obstacle.

In earlier dev diaries, I mentioned that I experimented with a system where naval hulls would tier up into advanced hull types. This did reduce end game ship counts and made individual ships more impactful, but we found a few drawbacks with the experiment. The importance of tech was increased even more than it already was, and there were “growing pains” moments when converting fleets up to the next tier that we thought might be interesting, but were more annoying than fun.

So far we’ve enjoyed the challenges posed by the following variant more:[/p][h3]The Naval Changes​[/h3][p]The Cetus Open Beta is decoupling Naval Capacity from The Corvette Standard™. Just like how in the pop rework this gave us more granularity with jobs, this gave us the design space to do things like give Frigates their own spot in the lineup partway between Corvettes and Destroyers, and let us move Bioships to their own scale. Starting Naval Capacity has been increased to 40, and you’ll still (typically) start with three Corvettes, but they’ll take more Naval Capacity than before. This does make it easier to maintain Power Projection, but building a massive fleet is a much larger undertaking, and individual fleets have a handful of each class of ship instead of an uncountable blob of overlapping polygons.

Here’s a spreadsheet excerpt that shows tentative Naval Capacity, Hull, Cost, and Upkeep for various ships. Costs and (especially) Upkeep are notably higher than before. Frigates are now faster (moving at Destroyer speed instead of Cruiser), sturdier, get another Aux slot, and use Destroyer-grade reactors instead of Corvette-grade. Titan Perdition Beams (and similar weapons) deal collateral damage to entire fleets. (This may be changed in future Open Beta updates to something like hitting 500 Naval Capacity worth of ships in the system instead, if it seems to incentivize fleet splitting too much.)[/p][p]Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork warned that based on his experience playing Vicky, leaving The Corvette Standard would lead to inflation.[/p][p]Juggernauts now have 10 shipyards (and the logistics reducing aura they already have).[/p][p][/p][p]Harbingers have an unusual Utility slot progression but we’re currently okay with that.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]These are probably completely overpowered but we’ll see.[/p][p][/p][p]Torpedoes have been rebalanced around these numbers and require more power (compensated on Frigates by their larger reactors).[/p][h3]Economic Changes​[/h3][p]Economically, the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta aims to deflate non-linear growth and push the game towards flatter, more controlled economies.

Goals of these changes were to make more modifiers matter, decrease the outliers, and create a leaner, more deliberate economic landscape. Some aspects of gameplay were too easy to circumvent or pin at maximum values such as empire size, happiness, and stability, while other systems such as unemployment were generally unenjoyable and did not add value to the game. Many modifiers have been returned to provide smaller, more focused bonuses or penalties, and during our economic pass we tended to favor job efficiency over raw output.

There have been some significant changes to how Automation and Fallen Empire Buildings function. They’re now job specific and Fallen Empire buildings are the only source of Specialist Job Automation.

Partial passes have been done on Origins and Ascensions, but I expect that we’ll be tweaking things and continuing passes for the next couple of months.[/p][h3]What Are We Looking For?​[/h3][p]We’d like feedback on what you think of these changes. Where have we gone too hard, what do you like, what have we missed, and so on. As I’ve mentioned, this is still an early build and we’ll be iterating on it until it releases. If (and when) you find something that’s grossly out of line with the rest of the game balance, let us know so we make sure it’s looked at.

Is the challenge level appropriate? Are there more sliders that we should add to galaxy generation, or changes we should make to the base game difficulties?

We've done up a feedback form so that we can get everyone's feedback in the one place, you can find it here.

Please note: This feedback form will be changed for each Open Beta update to ensure we're getting the latest information. Feel free to fill it out every time it comes out.[/p][p][/p][h3]Open Beta Patch Notes​[/h3][p]Okay, here we go. Note that some of the changes in the branch are not explicitly listed here, and are covered by general notes (Like “Many sources of Unity production have been reduced.”):[/p][h3]4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta Patch Notes 2025-12-11[/h3][p]Balance​[/p]
  • [p]The Dimensional Fleet Astral Action has been adjusted to the reduced general fleet sizes.[/p]
  • [p]Summons a number of Escorts equal to the number of Astral Rifts you have explored, and Cruisers equal to half that number, rounded down.[/p]
  • [p]Ship Naval Capacity usage has changed significantly.[/p]
  • [p]Corvettes: 5[/p]
    • [p]Frigates: 8[/p]
    • [p]Destroyers: 10[/p]
    • [p]Cruisers: 20[/p]
    • [p]Battleships: 40[/p]
    • [p]Titans and Bio-Titans: 80[/p]
    • [p]Juggernauts and Colossi: 100[/p]
    • [p]Maulers: 4/6/8[/p]
    • [p]Weavers: 8/12/16[/p]
    • [p]Harbingers: 16/24/32[/p]
    • [p]Stingers: 32/48/64[/p]
    • [p]Most ships (including Space Fauna and Event Ships) in general have 5x the Naval Capacity usage they used to.[/p]
    • [p]Nanite Swarmers are size 1[/p]
      • [p]TODO: Teeth of the Eater will likely take Naval Cap while you are not at war.[/p]
      • [p]Increased base and modified Vivarium capacity to work with new numbers[/p]
      • [p]Galactic Nemesis Marauding ships have 20% less naval capacity usage than their size would normally require. (Corvettes: 4, Destroyers: 8, Cruisers: 16)[/p]
  • [p]Titan Perdition Beams and Ancient Ruination Glare now deal collateral damage to other ships.[/p]
  • [p]Armor and Shields have been rebalanced, and now higher tiers also add a small amount of Armor or Shield Hardening as appropriate.[/p]
  • [p]These grant (tier - 1)% Armor or Shield Hardening[/p]
  • [p]Higher tier Ship and Component costs and upkeep have generally been increased.[/p]
  • [p]Crystal Hull plating now also grants flat damage reduction.[/p]
  • [p]Crystal-Infused Plating:[/p]
    • [p]S: 50 Hull, -1 Damage[/p]
      • [p]M: 150 Hull, -2 Damage[/p]
      • [p]L: 450 Hull, -4 Damage[/p]
    • [p]Crystal-Forged Plating:[/p]
    • [p]S: 100 Hull, -2 Damage[/p]
      • [p]M: 300 Hull, -4 Damage[/p]
      • [p]L: 900 Hull, -8 Damage[/p]
  • [p]Frigates are now faster and sturdier, moving at Destroyer speed instead of Cruiser, have +1 Utility and Aux Slot, and use Destroyer sized reactors[/p]
  • [p]Base Hull for ships have been adjusted.[/p]
  • [p]The multiplicative damage bonus Torpedoes and Torpedo-like weapons gain has been reduced to 20% of their former values because ship sizes are 5x larger. (Effectively no change.) The maximum bonus has been increased.[/p]
  • [p]Many sources of Empire Size modifiers have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]The base amount of Empire Size generated by pops has been halved.[/p]
    • [p]Especially things that reduce Empire Size from Pops down to 0.[/p]
    • [p]The base amount of Empire Size generated by colonies has been increased to 20.[/p]
  • [p]Effects and modifiers that granted jobs per pop have been replaced with static job numbers.[/p]
  • [p]After a review of Unemployment mechanics, we felt that they did not add significantly to the game.[/p]
  • [p]All unemployed pops now demote to Civilian (or Maintenance Drone, as appropriate) at the end of the month.[/p]
    • [p]Removed the "Rising Unemployment" event chain.[/p]
    • [p]Living Standards have been adjusted.[/p]
    • [p]All living standards now include information for Slaves, just in case you find some way to get them unusual and unexpected standards like Utopian Abundance.[/p]
      • [p]Happiness penalties on lower living standards now apply to Civilians.[/p]
    • [p]Removed Demotion Time bonuses as they’re no longer relevant.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced most job-based sources of research, but also reduced tech costs by half. This indirectly improves space-based deposits.[/p]
  • [p]Many buildings and modifiers that increased job output have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Most stability bonuses have been reduced to one half to one third of their previous values.[/p]
  • [p]The intention of this change is to make Stability generally more important and harder to pin at 100, and make things like +1 or +2 Stability effects more valuable.[/p]
  • [p]Most job efficiency modifiers have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Some production modifiers have been turned into job efficiency modifiers.[/p]
  • [p]Ethics Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Authoritarian:[/p]
    • [p]Worker Production bonus is now Worker Job Efficiency.[/p]
    • [p]Egalitarian[/p]
    • [p]Specialist Production bonus is now Specialist Job Efficiency.[/p]
    • [p]Pacifist[/p]
    • [p]Reduced Empire Size from Pops bonus to -10%/-20%.[/p]
  • [p]Many sources of Unity production have been reduced.[/p]
  • [p]Bubbles (and other misnamed variants) no longer uses up Naval Capacity[/p]
  • [p]Many traits that reduced Housing usage have been rebalanced.[/p]
  • [p]Increased base naval capacity to 40[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced Naval Capacity techs[/p]
  • [p]Increased the power usage of Torpedoes and Energy Torpedoes on standard ships[/p]
  • [p]Colony Designations now universally add Job Efficiency to their appropriate Jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Planetary Ascension now increases the Designation effect by 10% per tier instead of 25%.[/p]
  • [p]Obsessional Directive now grants +15% Artisan Drone Job Efficiency, and increased Consumer Goods storage. The Commodities Consolidation situation now grants Artisan Drone Job Efficiency and adds Unity production to Artisans (instead of all Unity).[/p]
  • [p]Ascension situations now progress slower.[/p]
  • [p]Exceptions: Synthetic Fertility and Endbringers. Tick-tock.[/p]
  • [p]Resettlement costs are now the same across all strata. (Since demotion is now immediate at the end of the month, this prevents an undesired element of micromanagement where you would want to fire any pops you wanted to resettle.)[/p]
  • [p]Anchorages now give +5 Naval Capacity, +3 with a Naval Logistics Office.[/p]
  • [p]Special planetary deposits are now 4x more common.[/p]
  • [p]The Subterranean Contact Zone now provides job swaps for traders or logistic drones.[/p]
  • [p]Removed inappropriate researcher jobs from planetary features which provided them.[/p]
  • [p]Made some unique planetary features more interesting.[/p]
  • [p]Subsidy Edicts now grant +20% or 10% Efficiency and +0.5 Trade Upkeep[/p]
  • [p]Readjusted bonuses from Genesis Guides civics[/p]
  • [p]Halved the modifiers from the Genesis Preserves[/p]
    • [p]Added an on action to remove the Preserves if you reform your government[/p]
    • [p]Reduced rewards from colonising from 500 Unity and 25 Influence to 250 Unity and 5 Influence[/p]
    • [p]Reduced rewards from uplifting from 1000 unity to 250 Unity and 5 Influence[/p]
    • [p]Ensured that a Genesis Preserve is created only if one does not already exist.[/p]
    • [p]Unity from Jobs modifier from the Genesis Monument is decreased to 10% if you don't have the civic[/p]
    • [p]Updated various checks to check for all variants of the civic instead of just the version for regular individualist empires[/p]
    • [p]Set the strata for newly spawned pre-sapients to actually be pre-sapient instead of No Category[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted some more upkeep reductions on buildings to match the new economic model.[/p]
  • [p]More strategic resource production has been moved to the strategic resource producing district specializations. Significantly reduced the amount given for free by the strategic resource deposits without the specialization.[/p]
  • [p]Tankbound Production Overseers now generate 2 Engineering Research instead of Unity, and grant +2% efficiency and +200 Amenities. They are only granted by Urban districts (or as Clerk swaps).[/p]
  • [p]Automation Building Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Assembly Patterns and Construction Templates are now Tier 2 and 4 technologies.[/p]
    • [p]Automation Buildings are now job specific, and no longer increase their upkeep based on district count.[/p]
    • [p]Automated Worker or Simple Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 4 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
      • [p]Automated Specialist or Complex Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 8 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
      • [p]Automated Elite Jobs increase their upkeep by 12 Energy per 100 jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Fallen Empire Buildings:[/p]
  • [p]Are now Planet Limit 1 and automate 25% or 50% of relevant Specialist jobs or 75% or 100% of relevant Worker jobs. These are the only sources of Specialist automation in the new economic system.[/p]
    • [p]Exceptions:[/p]
      • [p]Dimensional Replicator now produces 10 of each Strategic Resource, Dimensional Fabricator now produces 25 of each Strategic Resource and 5 of each Rare Resource[/p]
        • [p]Sky Dome / Empyrean Dome, Shrinkspace Depot / Extra-Dimensional Depot functionality remains the same.[/p]
    • [p]Adjusted costs, upkeep, and build times of Fallen Empire buildings.[/p]
  • [p]Fallen Empires now gain +100% Automated Workforce Efficiency[/p]
  • [p]Awakened Empires gain an additional +500% Automated Workforce Efficiency[/p]
  • [p]Soldiers are now Specialist (or Complex Drone) jobs with 1 Alloy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Polytechnic Mentors now grant Miners engineering research. The bonuses they grant have been reduced to +0.1.[/p]
  • [p]Naval Capacity:[/p]
  • [p]Naval Capacity values adjusted.[/p]
    • [p]Anchorages now have Trade Upkeep equal to the Naval Capacity they are providing.[/p]
  • [p]The Nano-Corpses deposit now yields alloys, not rare crystals.[/p]
  • [p]The Mountain in the Sky deposit from the Gravity Storm has been rebalanced, but allows construction of a unique district specialization.[/p]
  • [p]The Aquaculture district specialization now provides 50 jobs of each type, not 75.[/p]
  • [p]Anglers no longer produce additional food.[/p]
  • [p]Anglers and Pearl Divers are now swapped on wet worlds, regardless of district specializations.[/p]
  • [p]Factions have 50% reduced output during the first ten years of the game (when factions normally do not exist).[/p]
  • [p]Parliamentary System now grants +20% Faction Output but has +50% disapproval for unmet demands.[/p]
  • [p]Increased base Unity production of empires from 5 to 10.[/p]
  • [p]Civics that provide politician job swaps (Technocracy, Merchant Guilds, Exalted Priesthood) now provide additional jobs to relevant buildings.[/p]
  • [p]Overtuned origin no longer has early access to genetic ascension.[/p]
  • [p]The bonus pop growth and amenities provided by Genomic Researcher jobs from selecting Cloning traditions and choices during Biomorphosis have been moved to the Genomic Research Facility building. The amount of amenities granted has been increased to 500.[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced all council positions that gave flat resources to jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Dark Consortium Civic now has a beefier Dark Matter Deposit on game start.[/p]
  • [p]Pass on Edicts. Many now affect Efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Knights are now considered Soldiers instead of Bureaucrats and Researchers.[/p]
  • [p]Strong, Very Strong, and Weak traits now also affect Soldier efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted effects of Commander and Scientist governors.[/p]
  • [p]Battle Thralls now get a bonus to Soldier efficiency.[/p]
  • [p]Disruptors now start with 50% shield and armor bypass at tier 1 which increases to 80% at Psionic Disruptors. They now also deal +25% damage against shields.[/p]
  • [p]Increased Unity production and Consumer Goods upkeep of Politicians.[/p]
  • [p]Commander Starting Level civics: Swapped Commander XP Gain for Commander Upkeep Reduction on Distinguished Admiralty. Added Commander Upkeep Reduction to Warbots and Strength of Legions.[/p]
  • [p]Machine Capital Buildings (tier 2 or higher) now also add Coordinator jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced the power of the council positions for Chosen civics.[/p]
  • [p]The Corporate Authority now has +1 Envoy instead of +1 External Leader Pool.[/p]
  • [p]Clustered Capacity (Virtuality) now gives +75% Virtual Pop Job Eff and -10% per Colony. (Was +175%, -25% per Colony)[/p]
  • [p]Cybernetic Traits no longer have energy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]The Cybernetic and Limited Cybernetic traits now swap half of the base food (or equivalent) upkeep for energy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Media Conglomerate now gives early access to factions, but replaces faction unity output with trade output.[/p]
  • [p]Rebalanced many species traits[/p]
  • [p]Erudite[/p]
    • [p]+30% Researcher job efficiency -> +20% Researcher job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Fertile:[/p]
    • [p]+30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Vat Grown:[/p]
    • [p]+33% Organic Pop Assembly -> +25% Organic Pop Assembly[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Existential Iteroparity[/p]
    • [p]+30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Numistic Administration:[/p]
    • [p]+33% Trader job efficiency -> +25% Trader job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Dark Matter Engines[/p]
    • [p]+40% job efficiency -> +20% job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Dark Matter -> 0.03 Dark Matter[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Living Metal Augmentations[/p]
    • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Living Metal -> 0.03 Living Metal[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Biomimetic Assembly:[/p]
    • [p]+50% Replicator job efficiency -> +20% Replicator job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
    • [p]Matrix Trading[/p]
    • [p]+50% Trade job efficiency -> +20% Trade job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Number too big[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Rare Crystals -> 0.02 Rare Crystals[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Mote-Powered Tools[/p]
    • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Volatile Motes -> 0.02 Volatile Motes[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Exotic Fuel Consumption[/p]
    • [p]+10% job efficiency -> +10% Specialist & Complex Drone job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the next trait[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.04 Exotic Gases -> 0.05 Exotic Gases[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more[/p]
    • [p]Volatile Mote Reactor[/p]
    • [p]+30% Habitability -> +10% Worker & Menial Drone job efficiency[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the previous trait[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Volatile Motes -> 0.05 Volatile Motes[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous trait[/p]
    • [p]Rare Crystal Exterior[/p]
    • [p]+20% Metallurgist job efficiency -> +30% Habitability[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Flavour text makes this more appropriate for habitability[/p]
      • [p]Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Rare Crystals -> 0.05 Rare Crystals[/p]
      • [p]Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous traits[/p]
  • [p]The Arcology Project and districts on Ecumenopoleis now cost alloys instead of minerals[/p]
  • [p]Partial pass done for some advanced authorities. These will continue in future Open Beta drops.[/p]
  • [p]Dictatorial Cybervision now grants a flat Cyborg job efficiency bonus and scaling Stability for Enforcers.[/p]
    • [p]Physiological Transcendency now gives +2 Unity per 100 Politician jobs instead of +3 Unity per 100 Elite pops.[/p]
    • [p]Dictatorial Cybervision and Homogenous Submission now give Governing Ethics Attraction instead of Authoritarian ethics attraction.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced difficulty based scaling on the Grey Tempest and Khan. Roaming Tempest fleets may not always have a Mothership on lower difficulties. (Garrison fleets are unchanged.)[/p]
[p]Bugfix​[/p]
  • [p]Removed remaining references to pre-4.0 strategic resource harvesting jobs that were converted into job swaps.[/p]
[p]AI​[/p]
  • [p]AI empires will now prefer to have three or fewer underdeveloped colonies before colonizing the next one. (Underdeveloped is defined as having under 1000 pops.)[/p]
[p]UI​[/p]
  • [p]When using Observer mode, Mercenary Enclaves no longer appear in the regular empire list, they're at the end classified as "Minors"[/p]
  • [p]Unemployment information in the central bar of the planet view has been replaced with information on planet Denizens (Civilians or Maintenance Drones)[/p]
[p]Modding​[/p]
  • [p]Added faction_demands_met_mult and faction_demands_unmet_mult which affect faction approval or disapproval of met or unmet demands.[/p]
[p]Later today we're going to put the first part of the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta branch up on Steam as cetus_open_beta. We plan to update this branch again next week.

To access a Stellaris beta, go to your Steam Library, right-click the game, and select "Properties". From there, choose the "Betas" tab, and in the "Beta Participation" dropdown menu, select the cetus_open_beta beta branch from the list.[/p][p][/p][h3]What’s Next?​[/h3][p]Next week’s dev diary will feature any updates we make to the beta next week and will be our end-of-year review before the winter holidays.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]The Babyhemoth’s hunger for cuddles cannot be sated.[/p]

Stellaris Patch 4.2.4 released (checksum 7a03)

[p][/p][p]written by PDX-Loke[/p][p][/p][p]Hello,[/p][p][/p][p]Another patch has been readied, resolving a few more issues discovered in the 4.2 and Infernals release.[/p][p]4.2.4 should now be available for download via Steam, GOG. MS Store will follow shortly.[/p][p]Please find the patch notes below.[/p][p][/p][p]STELLARIS 4.2.4 PATCH NOTES[/p][p]Balance[/p]
  • [p]+25% volcanic world habitability for machine climate preference traits to match their minimum habitability value on Volcanic worlds.[/p]
  • [p]Replaced Food output for some specimens with one quarter as Alloy output bonus for Infernals.[/p]
  • [p]Slightly lower Unity and Research rewards for several events in the Red Giant and Cosmic Dawn Origins.[/p]
[p]Bugfix[/p]
  • [p]The Payback origin now get the correct starting buildings as Materialist and Spiritualist[/p]
  • [p]The trait Propaganda Machines now shows the correct modifier[/p]
  • [p]When transferring planets under colonization after a war is on, if the colonizing species isn't allowed to colonize the colony is destroyed (stops forever colonization where you keep sending the new colons to the slave pits)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed leaders losing ascension related traits after species modification in some cases.[/p]
  • [p]The tooltip for Permanent Employment Civic's Reassigners say they use "Food (or equivalent)", implying they use Alloys when you are Thermophile.[/p]
  • [p]Ringworld construction and other binary/trinary restrictions correctly apply in binary or trinary hyperthermia systems.[/p]
  • [p]Replaced minor additional food upkeep for hive mind unity boosting buildings with extra Alloy upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed infernal Alloy upkeep for Voidling, purging, and non-sapient pops.[/p]
  • [p]Voidworm Troika designs can be saved.[/p]
  • [p]Voidworm Troikas are no longer created without upgrades when three large voidworms combine.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed some issues with machine empires, catalytic processing and alloy producing jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed stuck in combat when the defender refuses to actually do combat.[/p]
  • [p]Volcanic Districts now improve tech weights.[/p]
  • [p]Preventing evasion to go negative from evasion against psionic modifier in combat calculation.[/p]
  • [p]Fixing abduction code setting the species correctly when checking if species can live on planet.[/p]
[p]Performance[/p]
  • [p]Optimized string allocation in ship component modifier processing.[/p]
[p]Stability[/p]
  • [p]Fixed random CTD with invalid ships[/p]
  • [p]Changed stack allocation to heap in particle varied values to avoid CTD:ing[/p]
  • [p]Fixed CTD due to race condition between UI and AI accessing base growth cache.[/p]
  • [p]OOS fix: Planet species caches are now stored in arrays instead of unordered sets or maps"[/p]
[p]UI[/p]
  • [p]Shows the 25% Minimum Habitability on Volcanic worlds for Mechanical and Machine pops[/p]
[p]Enjoy![/p]

Stellaris 4.3 will "bring things down a notch" with a stat squish, but it could make parts of the 4X game "much harder"

Following the launch of its Infernals DLC, Stellaris Season 9 has come to an end. Developer Paradox is now turning its attention to the next major update, Stellaris 4.3, which it's currently planning to roll out "sometime during the first quarter of 2026" following extensive testing in open beta. This rolling build will be updated "roughly once every two weeks," according to game director Stephen 'Eladrin' Muray, who says the team's primary goal is "to bring things down a notch" with updates to the economy and naval changes near the top of the list, along with the some more "dangerous" optimizations that could cause temporary additional issues.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Stellaris Infernals brings the heat to the strategy game's universe, and I can't wait to burn it all down

Stellaris announces release date for Infernals species pack, and I can't wait to finally play as volcanic Tyranids

Stellaris dev says performance is its "highest priority," but fixes aren't fast

Stellaris Dev Diary #406 - Infernals is Out, What’s Next?

[p][/p][p]by Eladrin[/p][p][/p][p]Hi everyone!

This morning we released the Stellaris 4.2.3 ‘Corvus’ update, with the following changes - updates from last Friday’s Open Beta are bold:
[/p][h3]4.2.3 ‘Corvus’ Release Notes[/h3][p]Improvement​[/p]
  • [p]Thermophiles can pick the Ocean Paradise Origin[/p]
  • [p]Thermophiles can pick the Aquatic Trait[/p]
  • [p]Thermophiles can pick the Agrarian Trait[/p]
  • [p]Thermophiles can pick the Agrarian Idyll Civic[/p]
  • [p]Thermophiles can pick the Anglers Civic[/p]
  • [p]Adds conditions to get alloys when you extort a Spiritualist Thermophile faction.[/p]
  • [p]Pyromanic Instinct blocks "friendly" Civics and Origins[/p]
  • [p]Rogue Servitor empires now receive an additional Alloys income when having an Infernal subspecies (instead of food)[/p]
[p]Balance​[/p]
  • [p]Reduced Infernal Livestock output from base 1.5 down to 1 Alloy[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted cost of the "Distribute Living Metal" decision from 500LM to 700LM[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted "Thermal Engineer" councilor (replaced "Research Cost (Engineering) -1%" with "Research Station Output +4%")[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted "Pyromanic Priest" councilor (Job Consumer Goods upkeep from -3% to -2%)[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted "Galvanic Symbiosis" planetary refund modifier from 1 to 0.75[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Adjusted Entropy Conduit ship stats (+2000 Hull +1000 Armor +2000 Shield)[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Adjusted "Entropy Harnessing" edict (Energy Credits from Technicians from -1 to -2.5, Entropy from Technicians from 0.5 to 0.4)[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Colonies buffed by Entropy Conduits now produce more unity[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Stars stellarformed by Entropy Conduits now gain additional deposits[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Machine Intelligence can now pick the ascension perk[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Cost of the "Life Seeding" decision changed from 1000 Energy to 2500 Entropy Crystals[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted alloy upkeep of Spawning Drones from 2.5 to 2[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted Infernal Livestock output from 1 to 0.75 alloys[/p]
[p]Bugfix​[/p]
  • [p]Fixed a typo in mercenary dividends relating to Galactic Risk Management[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Regenerative Armor from Galvanic Synthesis civic not auto-upgrading in ship designer when better armor technologies are researched[/p]
  • [p]Stop Quantum Catapult targeting graphics being shown in System view[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Infernal upkeep not being affected by Clone Soldier and Necrophage origin species traits.[/p]
  • [p]Subterranean Empires now have uncapped Mining Districts on Volcanic Worlds.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed issues with psionic assimilation for gestalt empires and individualist machines.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Ruler clothing for Infernal portrait 5 (shoulder plate for the hedgehog)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the issue with Black Needle Base no longer being colonizable after assaulting it.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Augmentation Bazaars not having access to Loyalty Circuits in empire creation.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Broken Shackles starting with 2k more pops than they should[/p]
  • [p]Migrating Forests modifiers and Special Projects are removed when the planet is terraformed to a Volcanic World.[/p]
  • [p]Eager Explorers now require Scientific Method to unlock Thermotechnic Forums.[/p]
  • [p]Stability from the Unbreakable Resolve trait gets properly applied even if the pop groups with Unbreakable Resolve were later additions to the planet in question[/p]
  • [p]Pops under assimilation no longer have extra upkeep.[/p]
  • [p]Planets with event purges should no longer continue purging after having been recolonized.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the tooltip for Syncretic Evolution mentioning the wrong number of pops.[/p]
  • [p]Subterraneans can no longer build Industrial Mining Sites without any gameplay effect.[/p]
  • [p]Volcanic World mineral extraction zones can now build Industrial Mining Sites for +2/+4/+6/+8 mineral districts unless they are already uncapped.[/p]
  • [p]Added flag infernal_subspecies for Infernal subspecies (used for some civics/mods)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed event "Star-Crossed Lovers" appearing for Scorched World Heralds[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the "Arcology Project" decision not counting Volcanic World districts[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Volcanic Worlds not having a click sound[/p]
  • [p]Fixed "Spawning Pools" from "Permutation Pools" civic for Hive Mind using food as Infernals[/p]
  • [p]Fixed "Seismic Carpetbombing" creating Volcanic craters on artificial planets[/p]
  • [p]Fixed "Bombardment Stances" not killing the last pops of a planet[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Infernal Livestock not counting for a Evolutionary Predator purge[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Infernal Livestock counting as Specialists[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the starbase building "Gravitational Centrifuge" (crisis path) not being buildable in crisis systems[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Pre-FTL civilizations spawned by the Hyperthermia crisis not ascending into the space age[/p]
  • [p]Pyromanic Instinct blocks other genocidal Civics[/p]
  • [p]Tankbound now gains Overseers from rural districts (Geothermal, Melting) on Volcanic Worlds[/p]
  • [p]AI Empires now build Thermotechnic Districts on Volcanic planets[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the Military Academy adding research output and consumer goods upkeep to soldier and warrior drone jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Military Academy bonus workforce is now empire-wide[/p]
  • [p]Hard Reset is no longer a valid origin for AI empires (that's like the entire narrative!)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed some edgecases when playing Hard Reset where you could end up with pops who had the old negative traits and never lost them.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the number of pops affected by the Zoonotic Plague, Enigmatic Fortress, and Numistic Order deals[/p]
  • [p]Terraforming your Homeworld will no longer cause the Terraforming event talking about making a second homeworld to fire.[/p]
  • [p]Re-enabled Devastation from Cosmic Storms at 0.01 per month.[/p]
  • [p]Infernal AI empires colonize properly (even if they don't have any food)[/p]
  • [p]Overclocking setting of the galactic crucible now also persists after loading a save game[/p]
  • [p]You can no longer queue construction of districts while the Arcology Project is underway.[/p]
  • [p]Cybernetic Imperial authorities now give additional noble jobs.[/p]
  • [p]Purging infernal pops gives alloys[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Fallen Empires being able to build "Starfire Cannons"[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Volcanic Forges not being destroyed after terraforming a planet into a Hive/Machine World or Ecumenopolis[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Fixed Conduits damaging own colonies when playing as non-Infernal empire[/p]
  • [p]Crisis Path: Fixed mining & research stations not working correctly when Conduits stellarform a star[/p]
  • [p]FE outposts now rebuild in systems where they have unconquered planets.[/p]
  • [p]Artillery combat computers will now prefer median range instead of max range, allowing Titans to use most of their weapons instead of only their Titan Weapon[/p]
  • [p]Fixed erroneous tooltip for the Cave Dweller concept[/p]
  • [p]Removed the surface quarry and the voltaic production yard from urban zones[/p]
  • [p]the Justicial Complex FE building can now be built on Penal Colonies[/p]
  • [p]Megastructures show correct value in upgrade tool tip for effects applied with the upgrade[/p]
  • [p]Stars stellarformed by an entropy conduit no longer reroll the deposits of the star[/p]
  • [p]Certain special deposits, such as those from the Life-Seeded origin, are now correctly kept upon terraforming into hive or machine worlds.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed being able to issue some fleet orders to unreachable systems if the fleet has a jump drive.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed missing newline for "not in range of Jump Drive" message in the tooltip for the build orbital station command.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed efficiency being able to go negative, causing jobs to run in reverse. As bad as those slave riots or fire cult ruined planets are, Metallurgists shouldn’t disassemble alloys back into their original components.[/p]
[p]Performance​[/p]
  • [p]Reduced memory allocations in topbar UI updates[/p]
[p]Stability​[/p]
  • [p]Fixed Mac CTD happening in late game when calculating fleet auras[/p]
  • [p]Fixed object lifetime issue from scope used by on_resolution_failed leading to undefined behavior.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed crash in strike craft being damaged by non existing/dead fleet.[/p]
  • [p]Fix an OOS on reconnect where Starbases where blocking fleets path on the server but not on the client[/p]
  • [p]Removed dependency on SetThreadDescription to enable the game to run on ex Windows 10 LTSB 2016.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed CTD that could happen when a special project was completed while no longer valid[/p]
  • [p]Made Stellaris respond to OS events during loading gui types to avoid "freezing" the system at 5% loading for an unknown amount of time (only dx11 backend).[/p]
  • [p]Fixed some more occurrences where file read/write is being blocked by system and stellaris handling it by crashing.[/p]
[p]Modding​[/p]
  • [p]Added a new flag to the Entropy Conduit target script to exclude special stars[/p]
[p]
Post-release support continues with the 4.2.4 patch currently being worked on.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the team at Forgotten Empires created a music video for the Infernals Species Pack, titled From Ashes We Rise.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Stick it on loop in the background while I go over our next steps.
[/p][h3]Performance and Ongoing Goals​[/h3][p]As described in Dev Diary #399, the top priorities of the Custodian team are:
[/p]
  1. [p]Get the overall MP Out of Sync rate back to 4.0.23 levels.[/p]
  2. [p]Focus on Performance improvements to get average overnight daily tick times for 300 year games under 375ms. (3.14 performance target.)[/p]
  3. [p]Reduce the MP Out of Sync rate for desyncs that recur after resyncing to 60% of the 4.0.23 rate.[/p]
  4. [p]Continue working on Performance improvements to get overnight average daily tick times for 300 year games under 350ms.[/p]
  5. [p]Rewrite how slavery is implemented.[/p]
[p]The 4.2.0 Open Beta brought over some improvements to thread pooling and how modifiers are applied to our version of the Clausewitz Engine, and it had some hardware-dependent performance improvements. Following the successful Open Beta, we included these changes in the Infernals release, and our internal performance graphs (Huge galaxy, default settings otherwise) comparing 4.1.7 (blue) to 4.2 (red) were pretty nice, looking like this:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]4.2 reached the average of 1 second per day (30 seconds per month) about 100 years later than 4.1.7 did.[/p][p](The steep drop at the end is due to tracking ending.)[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In our averages, the internal overnight runs were about 17% faster on 4.2 than 4.1.7. We’re still not where we want to be yet though.

As to where to go from there - I expect that we’ll be able to put up an early version of the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta within the next couple of weeks.
[/p][h3]4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta​[/h3][p]Cetus is ‘the whale’ - specifically, the sea monster sent to ravage King Cepheus’ realm after Cassiopeia boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nereids. Like that monster, this patch is intended to bring things down a notch.

We’ll be rolling changes into this Open Beta over time. In the initial drop, the only changes that aren’t already live in 4.2 will be the economic updates and ship design changes. These two alone have yielded about a 7% further improvement in overall performance, but as a warning, they’ve also made some aspects of the game much, much harder.

The economic level in the 4.3 Open Beta is much lower than from 4.0 to 4.2 - an economic “stat squish” has been done to compress numbers a fair bit across the board. We made changes to control most instances of non-linear growth, but we intentionally did not affect some threats like aggressive Space Amoebas or most Leviathans that haven’t kept up over the years. They haven’t been a challenge for quite some time, so it may come as a bit of a shock. Your fleets and economy will be weaker, as will that of other standard empires, but some challenges out there have intentionally not been weakened.

This rebalancing recenters what is “normal”, so old fleet or production values should not be used as a guideline for what’s “good” in this new world.

Our list of targets for 4.3, with their current status (🟢: Complete 🟡: Partial 🔴: Pending) are:
[/p][p]🟡 Economic Updates:​[/p][p]Updates have been made to Empire Size Modifiers, Unemployment, Base Tech Costs, Ethics modifiers, Upkeep Modifiers, produces_add Modifiers, Job-Based Research, Unity Production, Ascension Time, Living Standards, Happiness, Stability, Jobs per Pop, Housing Reductions, Colony Designations, Planetary Ascension, Special Planetary Deposits, Strategic Resource Production, Automation Buildings, and Fallen Empire Buildings.​[/p][p]Still outstanding are passes on Megacorp Branch Offices, most Ascensions, most Traditions, some Civics, some Councilor Effects, Automation Costs, and more.​[/p][p]🟡 Naval Changes:​[/p][p]Bordering on green - the branch includes Naval Capacity changes (both amount used and ease of generation), inherent Armor and Shield hardening, Damage Reduction effects, Frigate buffs, Titan buffs, general ship stats, Cost and Upkeep.​[/p][p]Still outstanding include changes to Nanite Swarmers and Teeth of the Eater, as well as some balance issues.​[/p][p]🟢 Integrate Modifier System from Newer Clausewitz​[/p][p]Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.​[/p][p]🟢 Integrate Thread Pool System from Newer Clausewitz​[/p][p]Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.​[/p][p]🟢 Improved Crash Reporter​[/p][p]Improved reporting on crashes to help us be able to fix them. Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.​[/p][p]🔴 Improved Performance Tracking​[/p][p]Improved reporting on general game performance to help find issues​[/p][p]🔴 Improved Out-of-Sync Tracking and Reporting​[/p][p]Improved reporting and tracking of OOSes to make them easier to track down and fix​[/p][p]🔴 “Dangerous” Modifier Optimizations​[/p][p]Optimize Pop Groups, Ships, Fleets, Planets, Armies, Espionage, and Scripted Triggers to take advantage of the new systems.​[/p][p]Note that we do expect that as this is implemented, multiplayer stability will temporarily get worse on the beta branch until we can find and fix the new issues.​[/p][p]🔴 Ethics and Factions Optimizations​[/p][p]Fixes to a long list of issues surrounding Ethics Shift and Factions.​[/p][p]🔴 Memory Allocation Optimizations​[/p][p]Improved memory use and allocation.​[/p][p]🔴 Improved Job Swapping[/p][p]New job swap options can let us further merge jobs, making gestalt jobs swaps of their regular counterparts.​[/p][p]🔴 Slavery Reimplementation​[/p][p]Reimplement Slavery using a simpler system that will work better with 4.x systems.​[/p][p]🔴 Multiplayer Stability​[/p][p]Reach a more acceptable level of Multiplayer Out-of-Syncs.​[/p][p]
You’ll see this list repeated a few times in diaries over the next few months.

Each of these items are able to be added or removed from the Open Beta branch individually - for example, if we decide that we do not want to release the Naval Changes, they are not part of the base 4.3 branch at this time and can remain in a parallel branch for as long as needed for further polish.

As I mentioned earlier, this will be a rolling Open Beta, and we expect to update it roughly once every two weeks (skipping the second half of December - though I would like to update it once before the end of the year). It’s possible that it will be updated more often than that when features come online. Currently 4.3 ‘Cetus’ is expected to go live sometime during the first quarter of 2026, but what is actually in it and whether or not it shifts to later on will depend on how the Open Beta progresses.
[/p][h3]Primal Plushie: The Babyhemoth​[/h3][p]So when I had the chance to influence the next Makeship Stellaris product, I immediately thought of this event:
[/p][h3]The Babyhemoth has arrived.[/h3][p][/p][h3]Next Week[/h3][p]Next week we’ll go into more detail on the exact changes that the economic and naval changes entail. It’s gonna be a long one.
[/p][p]See you then![/p][p]
[/p]