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

New Stellaris DLC Shadows of the Shroud currently has a Steam review score of just 43% positive, yet once again it's not the content of the expansion at fault, but rather the impact on performance. Similar to the launches of Stellaris 4.0 and Biogenesis, most of the negative responses to the new release praise the factions and its handling of Psionic Ascension, but complain of bugs, desyncs, crashes, and instability. It's not a good look for one of the best 4X games on PC, and game director Stephen 'Eladrin' Muray explains some of the problems - but warns that the road to recovery could be a "long haul."

In the latest Stellaris dev diary, Muray notes that the open beta for patch 4.1.4 "found some critical issues," so it won't be going into public release; instead, a 4.1.5 open beta has just been launched that includes many further fixes. Moving forward, he says, "Performance remains the highest priority of the internal Stellaris team," with a dedicated subteam from the developer's 'custodians' exclusively focused on investigating and fixing the current problems.

"It's our goal to make steady progress on performance, but this is going to be a long haul and won't be a 'magic patch' that fixes everything," Muray remarks. He says the team is currently focused on "how modifiers are applied, fleet counts, UI impacts, and economic balance" as the major targets. After some bug report investigations, he noticed "an unusually large number of ships in late-game saves," and realized that "the more powerful economies of 4.0 are causing us to reach previously endgame counts of ships a hundred years earlier."

Muray adds that it seems the rival AI in 4.0 "is much better at filling out their naval capacity and expanding it, but not nearly to the degree that players are." Overall, comparisons show that 4.1 performance is "marginally better than 3.14 until a little bit after 2300, after which the two suddenly diverge." The team is therefore generating more saves to figure out the root of the issue. "Reducing the number of ships in the game through a combination of economic balancing and mechanical changes looks like it has some promise," he says, "but we clearly have client-side improvements to investigate."

QA analyst 'Gosia' chimes in briefly to talk about the testing side. "Do they even test it? Do they even care? Yes. Performance has had our attention even before 4.0 was released" They explain that Paradox has "machines ranging from low-spec to high-spec that we use to track performance 24/7." If you're curious for a deeper dive into the process, you can read it here - it's certainly interesting, but goes a bit beyond what we need to talk about now.

So what's actually being done? Muray says the performance team is currently rewriting how modifiers are calculated; "We consider this a 'potentially dangerous change' but it should have some positive (but hardware-dependent) impact, with greater impact on the late game." He cautions that Paradox is being "very careful with deploying any changes here" due to the way modifiers touch "literally everything" in your playthrough.

On the topic of ship counts, Muray points to a new Stellaris mod that multiplies ship cost and power by ten to reduce the total number. "This is somewhat similar in nature to one of my internal design experiments, though my variant is based partially on how Hearts of Iron handles advanced vehicle design," he explains. This would introduce more powerful, advanced hulls with higher cost, upkeep, and naval capacity.

In terms of economics, Muray says, "The biggest design-side task is to analyze and curb some of the non-linear growth in the post-4.0 economy. While we want planet design and the decisions you make to remain rewarding, currently there are some elements that create excessive positive feedback loops or are otherwise above the desired curve. Like the Technology open beta, we need to bring things back to a proper baseline."

Rounding out the diary, Muray touches on multiplayer stability and desyncs. "We are aware that there are stability issues," he writes, "and need your help to fix them." The inherently more complex nature of involving several players makes reproducing such issues much harder, and he notes that the team does "actively fix desyncs with just about every version," but that new ones often pop up in their place. He reiterates that if you run into any such issues, submitting it via the bug report forums is the best way to help.

While Paradox continues its work to restore stability to its intergalactic escapades, we've rounded up the best space games along with the best strategy games in 2025.

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