I use both Softimage and Houdini for particle effects, so have long been sold on the benefits of nodes. In comparison to the Red Giant’s Trapcode Suite, Stardust offers many advantages and has much to admire. But (and this will hurt even more as you grow the capabilities for instancing real 3d geometry) the lack of multithreading is a major issue for me. ICE in Softimage introduced threaded particle effects in a DCC nearly 10 years ago, Houdini followed soon after and X-Particles is threaded too (though not as robust as ICE or Houdini).
I love the workflow, the visual finesse of the 2, 2.5 & 3d rendering (smart idea to go PBR and dial up OpenGL effects to 11 for the 3d stuff). But a lack of threading in 2017 is for me a massive minus; one big enough that I’ll probably stick to using DCC’s for particle effects. I’m looking into the feasibility of using Stardust for supplemental effects (and possibly for 2.5 D stuff) but the lack of multithreading feels like a major error of judgement.