Paradox pushed the Stellaris 4.5.3 “Cygnus” open beta to the stellaris_test branch on Steam on 28 October 2026. It’s a bug fix pass rather than a content drop, but there’s a lot packed into it, from resource building limits to a long list of habitability corrections that have been bugging players for a while.
The headline change for economy builds: Betharian Processing, Exotic Gas Capture, Rare Crystal Extraction, and Volatile Motes Harvesting are now capped at one per planet. Gestalt empires get automation for Logistic Drone jobs on Virtual Bliss Plaza and Omni-Bliss Nexus, and Hedonists on the Decadent Lifestyle now burn half the amenities while there’s no Consumer Goods deficit. Tankbound empires start with an extra Generator District instead of eating into Agriculture or Mining Districts, and the old bug where Tankbound Infernal empires spawned with three bonus energy districts on their capital is gone.
Habitability finally gets cleaned up
The biggest chunk of this beta is a batch of habitability fixes. Species that can hit 175% or 250% habitability were previously capped at showing 125% across the planet summary, colonization view, terraforming panel, galaxy map and resettlement screens. All of those now show the real number along with the bonuses that come with it. Paradox also fixed mismatched tooltips on Mutation Authority and the Habitability breakdown, corrected the Stellar Ignition description, and stopped Mutagenic Habitability species from taking Hydrocentric without an Aquatic trait. Several smaller issues around Climate Mods traits, Auto-Modding values and resettlement logic were patched too.
Elsewhere, district specializations now convert properly when a colony changes owners or no longer meets the requirements, for example Coastal Hamlets switching to Aquaculture or Agricultural Focus, and Administrative Hub, Spiritual Enclave and Sanctuary Enclave converting between each other. Multiplayer gets a fix for an out-of-sync bug when downgrading a Deep Space Citadel, and combat armies now return to their transport ships if a war ends mid-fight. Cyberization situations should no longer freeze at -99% speed after dealing with spiritualists, and Occupied subject colonies no longer leak job resources to their overlord.
What it means if you run mods
If you’re running Stellaris with mods, treat this as a standard heads up: any mod touching districts, habitability calculations, job automation or the fleet manager UI could behave differently once you switch to this beta branch, since Paradox reworked how several of those systems handle edge cases. Back up your save before opting into stellaris_test, and check mod pages for comments about compatibility with 4.5.3 before loading an existing campaign. Total conversion mods and anything overhauling planet or district mechanics are the most likely to need an update.
Source: Steam · Image: Steam
