Number of desyncs in Stellaris skyrockets after BioGenesis and 4.0 update. Can you do something about that?

Paradox is known for supporting their games with a new content for a long time. And indeed, Stellaris is almost a decade old already, yet it’s still being worked on, with new updates and expansions added. Not that long ago, patch 4.0 has launched, simultaneously with BioGenesis, the first episode of season 9. It made a lot of players get back to the game and check out the fresh patch (via SteamDB). However, not everything goes smoothly, as there are fans who complain about increased number of desyncs in the title. Is there anything that can be done about it? Let’s try to find a remedy.

How to deal with desync in Stellaris 4.0 BioGenesis

Game development is hard and making a reliable and fair multiplayer module that accounts for people situated in different locations is even harder. One would argue that it is not necessary to have amazing connection for strategy games, yet Stellaris proves otherwise with its desync issues that seem to be on a rise since 4.0 patch and BioGenesis expansion have launched. Is there a way to prevent those errors?

Sadly, there is no permanent, proper fix that would end the issue completely. However, cunning players have come up with a couple of workarounds that can at least mitigate the problem. If you would like to give them a try, they go as follows:

1. Load the game in a singleplayer mode, play for two – three days against AI opponents, and then make a new save file. Next, host this instance. It has a disadvantage of having some moves done by computer for your friends, which they will have to account for, yet many fans claim that it lowers the desync rate significantly.
2. When the desync error happens, attempt quitting the game, yet as the confirmation window appears, instead of confirming cancel it. It is something simple to try, which works for some players.
3. If this happens to one of your friends, another way to deal with it is to sadly kick the affected participant. There is a chance that after removing the player who was desynced, the problem won’t spread to another one.
4. A limiting option to try is to not make your game too big. As the state of the game has to be synced, having less information to exchange can be beneficial. There are suggestions to not go beyond 5 empires, 2x speed and not going for marauder empires and caravaneers. Sadly, it restricts the gameplay possibilities, but if you value playing with others more, this can be a way to go.
5. Last thing to do is to… ignore the desync completely. There are fans who have noticed that the game continues normally even after the desync, like it didn’t even happen.

Hopefully, Paradox will address those problems in future patches or hotfixes. There are chances that they will keep looking into it, as they do seem to care about Stellaris a lot. If you would like to voice your opinion about the game or stay up to date with news about it, make sure to visit production’s official Discord server. Good luck!

Stellaris

May 9, 2016

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