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Stellaris

Stellaris 4.3 "Cetus" Open Beta Updated (2026-01-30)

Posted by PDX_ladydzra on

Hello Stellaris Community!

There will be no dev diary this week, we hope to be back next week with a dev diary. We’re expecting dev diaries to be irregular over the next little while our focus is working on issues with the base game.

Today’s beta update has lots of great fixes and balance changes that the community has been asking for over the course of the open beta. From scaling down Mid and End-Game Crisis strengths, to buffs to Cybernetic Ascension, to offering more sources of Command Limit and Naval Capacity, we hope that this is the best iteration of the Open Beta yet.

Have some feedback, or something feel not-quite-right? We also have a new Open Beta Feedback Form [pdxint.at]to fill out!

Without further ado, let's get to the patch notes:

4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta Patch Notes 2026-01-30​

Balance​

  • Voidworms will be less likely to attack a planet with fewer than 1000 pops.

  • Changes to the Necrophage Origin:

    • Necrophage Chambers of Elevation now block pop growth for necrophage species.

    • Necrophyte Apprentice jobs now boost the pop growth of non-necrophage species on the same planet by a small amount.

    • These changes mean that the pop growth weirdness of the origin should be gone and planets with Necrophyte Apprentices should retain a high rate of growth of the secondary species, with the once per decade rituals mass converting pops to the primary species.

    • When playing a hive-minded necrophage, the force spawned pre-ftl empires are no longer hive-minded.

  • Entropy Drinkers civics

    • Replaced the scaling empire-wide energy credit production from Entropy Drinkers civics with "Energy Credits per 100 Psionic Pops: +0.5"

    • Entropy Drinkers councilors now give +3% Leader XP per level.

    • Taking any non-Psionic ascension path now blocks you from reforming into Entropy Drinkers, since starting with the civic locks you into psionic ascension.

  • Chosen civics now give +10% Unity at 1,000 attunement points (was 50%)

  • Space Fauna now have 10% Armor and Shield Hardening per rarity tier for each tier above Common

  • Modifiers for rural jobs from Storm Relief Centers have been halved.

  • Reduced the power of the Prethoryn, Contingency, Extradimensionals, Great Khan, Diadochi, Tempest, and Dessanu fleets by approximately a third.

  • Cybernetic Ascension:

    • Added two new positive Cyborg species traits for pop growth and bureaucrat output.

    • The Metabolic Reprocessing now also gives robot assembly from Augmentor jobs and organic assembly from Roboticist jobs.

    • The Integrated Anatomy no longer gives +1 organic species trait pick but instead +1 robot species trait point and +1 robot species trait pick.

    • Robot pops should no longer be penalized by reduction to non cyborg pop happiness.

    • Cyber Hives now receive temporary buffs (+3 skill level, +25% xp gain) to their Nodes as well as planets (+15% job productivity and -7.5% job upkeep) when assimilating new cyborgs into the collective. Devouring Swarms receive these bonuses upon purging pops instead.

    • Driven Assimilators now unlock additional effects on their cyborg traits for their ruler (-35% cyborg upkeep and +15% complex drone productivity) and governors (+20% replicator output).

    • Augmentors now produce 1.75 engineering research, up from 1.5, as well as 1.75 society research. The driven assimilator variant now provides 3 pop assembly, from 2. (The regular variant instead grants robot assembly, as mentioned above).

      • The society research output of genomic researchers and spawning drones (after completing genetic ascension) from 4.5 to 3.5 to bring them in line with this.

  • Reduced the power of Awakened Fallen Empires and Cetana's fleets by roughly half.

  • Increased many sources of Command Limit and Naval Capacity.

    • Galactic Force Projection, War Games (Supremacy Traditions), and Better Glandular Stimulation (Behemoth Fury Crisis Perk) now grant Command Limit multipliers instead of flat values.

  • Increased the costs to build larger and higher tier ship sections and ship components. This includes the Fallen Empire ships from Cosmogenesis.

  • Reduced the damage reduction of Crystal Plating to 1/2/3 and 2/3/4 from 1/2/4 and 2/4/8.

  • Slightly improved mineral deposits on Asteroids and energy deposits of many stars.

Bugfix​

  • All awakened empires now get their automated production bonuses.

  • Increased Voidworm Command Limits so they can now fit enough adults into a single fleet to merge into a troika.

    • Let us know if the Voidworm Plague keeps eating the galaxy.

  • Scrapping robots during an alloy deficit now gives 1 alloy per pop instead of 100 alloys per pop.

  • Regular empires can no longer psionically awaken robots.

  • A mysterious ghost district no longer sometimes appears in the UI for the Synaptic Lathe.

  • The Interloper in pre-ftl Shattered Ring systems can now be removed.

  • Fixed resettlement costs being inconsistent.

  • Storm Relief Centers can now be built.

  • Some slaves no longer benefit from job efficiency bonuses twice.

  • Fixed the tooltips for Battle Thrall slavery and Military Service to clarify that slaves need to be Battle Thralls to be soldiers.

  • The rampaging trees no longer continue to kill everyone after they have in fact been defeated.

  • Some bioship components that escaped earlier cost and upkeep adjustments now match their mechanical counterparts. The same is true for Offspring ships.

Performance​

  • Removed some redundant modifier updates from Armies and from Pops

  • Optimized allocations when counting species

  • Moved script calculations out of modifier calculations for better performance

  • Moved some trigger evaluations out of modifier calculations for better performance

  • Fixed a bug that was disabling threading of the economic system introduced in earlier open beta. This should be especially noticeable (or rather, should no longer be noticeable) on the monthly calculations, which should be more seamless now.

  • Fixing performance regression in language localization system.

Stability​

  • Addressed some stack overflows on macos

Modding​

  • Added support for districts_per_building for District Specializations. This allows limiting the number of buildings based on the number of built districts but is not currently being used yet.

For previous Open Beta patch notes, please visit the Paradox forums[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

How to Opt-In

To access the 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.

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:

  1. Right click Stellaris in Steam and select "Properties..."

  2. Goto "Installed Files" tab and select "Browse..." (this should take you to where Stellaris is installed)

  3. Find the file "stellaris" and double click it

Run thru Proton:

  1. Right click Stellaris in Steam and select "Properties..."

  2. Goto "Compatability" tab and tick the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" checkbox

  3. Select "Proton 10.0-3" or a suitable version (https://www.protondb.com/app/281990 for help)

  4. Update the game and press "Play" in steam

Thank you for playing Stellaris and for your feedback and support during the 4.3 “Cetus” Open Beta!