Stellaris developers have released the open beta update 4.3 Cetus.
Stellaris Developers Release Open Beta Update 4.3 Cetus
The Stellaris team has released another patch for the open beta of update 4.3 Cetus. In it, the developers focused on refining mechanics, fixing bugs, and optimizing performance, as well as summarizing the results of their analysis of community feedback.
Among the key improvements is a revision of several technologies, which are now marked as "gateway technologies" for specializing rural districts. These are Field Modulation, Eco Simulation, and Geothermal Fracking. Additionally, an important clarification has been added to the description of the Scorched World Heralds civic: it now states that diplomacy with other thermophiles is possible.
The developers have also adjusted the text option for Rogue Servitors when encountering alien life and blocked the first robot timeline event for machine species.
Significant changes have been made to balance. For example, Scorched World Heralds have lost the ability to grant full citizenship or resident status to conquered non-thermophile populations. Another notable change is the reduction of the minimum fleet combat power required to engage an ambushing Cutholoid to 600 units. Although the battle will still be challenging, the chances of victory have noticeably increased.
The developers have eliminated a number of technical issues. Specifically, the functionality of the Resync button in multiplayer has been restored, issues with the scope of random events when bordering caravaners have been fixed, and the Luminary for Under One Rule now receives the correct number of traits according to their level.
Furthermore, the problem where the Galactic Crucible sometimes failed to trigger a notification or event choice after capture (in some cases after a war) has been resolved. Additionally, the Scion origin now blocks the Scorched World Heralds civic, and modifiers from a starbase targeting the owner country are now correctly recalculated. Another improvement: upgrading a starbase with a Resource Silo no longer reduces the empire's overall resource capacity.
Significant progress has been made in performance optimization. The storage of event parameters has been reworked, reducing memory allocations for 95% of EventScope usage cases. A number of operations have become significantly faster: AddOrUpdateScopeParameter — 71 times, CreateEventScope — 48 times, AddScopeParameter — 83 times. The speed of GetScopeParameter has increased by 35% (median time reduced by 84%).
Additionally, the calculation of modifiers for ships (Ship CalculateModifier) has become 68% faster, and for armies (Army CalculateModifier) — 5.3% faster. The daily update of uninhabited planets (Uninhabited Planet DailyUpdate) is now performed 3–5% more efficiently.
As a result, gameplay has become smoother, the load on the memory allocator has decreased, and frame processing time has been reduced by approximately 10%.