patch · March 31, 2026
Stellaris Update 4.3.3 ‘Cetus’ Adds Galaxy Sliders and Fixes Starbase Armor
Stellaris patch 4.3.3 brings advanced galaxy sliders, building efficiency buffs, starbase armor corrections, and planetary automation fixes.
Paradox released Stellaris update 4.3.3 ‘Cetus’ across all platforms, introducing customizable galaxy settings, economic rebalancing, and several bug fixes.
Advanced Galaxy Settings
Players can now use multiplicative Naval Capacity and Command Limit sliders ranging from x0.5 to x5.0 in Advanced Galaxy Settings, though hard caps remain at 9999 and 1000. Soldiers, Battle Thralls, and Warrior Drones now provide 4 Naval Capacity for 1 alloy of upkeep. Thrall World modifiers also reduce Soldier job alloy upkeep by 25%.
Building Rebalancing
Efficiency bonuses for buildings like the Slave Processing Facility, Orbital Slave Processing Hub, Administrative Complex variants, Data-Driven Theorem Facility, Distributed Design Center, and Metallurgical Research Lab increase from 5% to 10%. Memory Vaults now grant 1% Monthly Unity per Destiny trait instead of flat unity, with energy upkeep scaling similarly.
Automation and AI Fixes
Planetary automation works reliably again, constructing districts and non-job buildings when listed for a colony. The civilian threshold for automation checks drops to 50. AI economic plans and stronghold construction loops have been adjusted, and swarm and siege combat computers now maintain close-range combat properly.
Combat and Stability
Starbases no longer receive double armor or propagate armor to all defense platforms, which may lower defensive power on existing starbases. Voidworms now use experimental subspace navigation to return home and stop endless bombardment loops. Numerous rare threading crashes, division-by-zero errors, and asset logging issues were also eliminated.
Why this patch matters
The Cetus update cleans up foundational automation and AI logic while giving players direct tools to scale empire capacity and military constraints.