[2022] Stellaris is Stuttering

If a game version that used to perform well no longer does, that points to some new local problem or change.


Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, refresh rate 60.

Is that any better?  

LoiteringAround said: I did not see any improvements, however, unless I'm being dumb, that was intended to cap the in-game fps to 60 fps right ? Both nvidia's performance overlay and 3dstats showed fps in the 200s when I started a new game.

Yes, that is what should have happened. But is geForce Experience running? It may be trying to optimise that game, I've seen that actually make it run worse. If it's loaded, unload it and try again.

If however it's not loaded, you can load it and set it to cap the frame rate.  

I think what you are getting at with those screenshots is the fps are lower when there's a lot of stuff on the screen, is that right?

LoiteringAround said: I have noticed and remembered that Stellaris sometimes does not start with the right resolution, sometimes it will start in 4k and I have to restart the game. This was happening before the issue and it happened when I was going through these steps.

This however I don't understand. The game should read the settings.txt file and use that resolution, and that's that.

Your Windows User Documents folder is not on OneDrive is it?  

LoiteringAround said: I don't keep any local files back up in OneDrive, but I uninstalled it to be sure.

Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to Properties, Location. It'll say if it's held local or OneDrive there.

LoiteringAround said: Screenshots were to show the missing texture and the stutter right after clicking on a system to view it.

I'm not familiar enough with how that screen should look to see what you were getting at there then, sorry - I don't actually play this game!

LoiteringAround said: I have found that pausing the music does stop the stuttering in the early game. However, I ran a game overnight in observation mode, and the stuttering is still apparent in the later stages of the game. Its less frequent than what I was observing in the early game, however, the framedrops or lag spikes are much more severe.

That almost sounds like there are two unrelated causes of your problems ! But I don't see any cause for them in these files that you or I could do anything about I'm sorry - either there's a game bug affected it on your hardware, or there's a problem in your machine causing it, or perhaps both.

Can you test affected save games on any other machine you might have access to?  

I did play Stella soon after release but simply no time now; I am supporting something like 30-40 games now!

By all means attach an affected save file here for me or others to test out.

LoiteringAround said: No other game I've played recently has had issues like this and for most of the hundreds of hours I have, its has been problem free. It's frustrating, I don't understand what triggered it.

Do you know when it last worked okay for you? If so you can try reverting to the game patch that was current at that time to see if it still runs well or now has this problem.

Patches - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com Note that when you revert game versions you should delete the Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folder (except any valued save games of course) so the older game version can write it the way it wants to.  

LoiteringAround said: It was last working on the current patch, but I have tried reverting to other patches to no success.

Ah, so clearly some local problem then, something has changed in your system to cause this for you. Quite what I do not know, we've seen no clues to point to ny particular area of Windows or hardware!

LoiteringAround said: Does this mean its an engine issue ?

How could that be if you had the same game version and thus engine version when it ran okay? But you could test with Crusader Kings 2, which is free to play onSteam now and uses an older version of the same engine.  

LoiteringAround said: I'm downloading CK2 now to test it. My friend stuttering in his game with the save I gave him is not as significant as I thought ?

It has significance, but is not decisive evidence in its own right.

You raised a theory that the game engine is at fault so I'm assuming you want that investigated, that's what we're doing now. As I say it seems unlikely as if that were the issue every user would get this problem, AND you say you did not get the problem using the identical game and engine versions previously. If you no longer wish to pursue that angle that's fine by me, just let me know!  

Well we didn't think Steam was causing it!

In any case it seems something has happened to your system or Windows installation to cause this with our games, hard to see exactly what though. Install and run the free utility Speccy; send its output to a text file and attach that here please.