Stellaris 4.3 "Cetus" Open Beta Updated (2026-02-06) [Checksum 2e59]

Hello Stellaris Community!

Work on the open beta is still chugging along, and the Devs have put together another batch of balance changes, bug fixes and performance improvements that we're ready for you to try out.

This update should also NOT require any of the previous workarounds for Linux.

How do you feel about the latest version of the open beta? Did we go too far, or have things still left to update? Let us know in the comments below and on the Open Beta Feedback form.

Here are today's patch notes:

Balance​

• Changed the scaling of Imperious Architecture

• Increased the maximum damage scaling for weapons that increase damage based on target ship size.

• Reduced the effect that Councilor skill levels has on Agenda speed.

• Loyalty Circuits has been replaced by Compliance Filters as an auto-modding trait. This means that Augmentation Bazaars can pick it on game start as well.

• The augmentation center now provided 400 jobs for Driven Assimilators

• Augmentor jobs for regular empires now provide flat bonus pop growth, not a multiplier to existing pop growth.

• Synthetic Fertility now starts with Powered Exoskeletons

• Significantly changed the Eater of Worlds Covenant Powers and Auras

  • The Doom power for the Eater of Worlds no longer immediately starts a war.

  • The Aura Intensification of the Eater of Worlds no longer summons ships from nothing.

  • The Aura Intensification of the Eater of Worlds now increments your Doom Intensity.

  • The Doom power now manifests the Doom of the Eater fleet.

  • Between 3 and 6 Intensity, this fleet only has Teeth (escorts).

  • Between 6 and 12 Intensity, this fleet has Teeth (escorts) and Fangs (cruisers).

  • At 12 or higher Intensity, this fleet has Teeth (escorts), Fangs (cruisers) and Tusks (Battleships).

  • Intensity is capped at 50.

  • The number of ships depends on Doom Intensity.

  • Manifesting a new fleet will instantly dismiss any current fleet.

    • IMPORTANT WARNING: The Eater of Worlds will consume any Admiral left in charge of this fleet when it is dismissed. This wasn't intentional so we'll probably change this, even though it's very thematic.

  • The fleet will appear in orbit of any planet with a Sanctum of the Eater (or if one doesn't exist, your capital).

Bugfix​

• Refugee Attraction was not working at all, whoops.

• The cross-platform Cloud Save system now works as expected.

• Tidied up some Cybernetics related tooltips.

• Remove flickering from buildable area for Deep Space Citadel.

• Fire Oracles now only appear if the main species of an empire has habitability \\<= 50% (before it was any local species)

• Wilderness empires now pay Biomass when terraforming a Volcanic World into a normal habitable planet

• Fixed command_limit_mult acting like command_limit_add.

Stability​

• Rebuilt libPDXSDK.so for Linux to make it compatible within the steam runtime environment as well as directly run in a Ubuntu 20 compatible distribution

Performance​

• Significantly reduced the lag spike when creating the Solarpunk country

• Optimization of functions related to string

• Optimized memory allocations in Alert Manager

• Improved fleet icon logic

• Added experimental economic threading changes to the Open Beta

  • New dependency tracking should reduce the cpu wait time when updating and reducing the “monthly stutter”

  • Decreased sizes of threaded batches for objects that are many and becomes uneven in cpu need for better distribution over multiple cores

• Added experimental modifier threading changes to the Open Beta

  • Mainly for reusing memory and reduce time spent on allocations/deallocations in the update

  • Decreased sizes of threaded batches for objects that are many and becomes uneven in cpu need for better distribution over multiple cores (yeah here as well)

• Major rework of modifier calculations for Planets, PopGroups, Armies, Leaders, Ships and Fleets

  • Moving trigger dependent calculations out to suitable pulses instead (Micro, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly)

  • Number of trigger evaluations optimized

Known Issues​

• Multiplayer games will see a mass desync at game start, but resyncing should resolve it

The rest of the 4.3 "Cetus" Open Beta patch notes can be found on the Paradox forums.

Thanks for playing Stellaris, and we look forward to seeing your feedback on this new version of the Open Beta!