Minimum stretch from dropdown is clipping/saturating bright stars, how can I fix this?

Currently I use APP for calibration, stacking, and gradient removal.  I also prefer to do an initial light stretch in APP as I find it difficult to stretch from the linear data in photoshop.  However I am running into an issue, where even if I use the minimum stretch on the dropdown (10% BG, 5 sigma, 2.5% base), many of the brighter stars in the image end up at 255,255,255 and all color data is lost.

I have figure out that the three sliders below the stretch drop down control can be used to adjust the amount of stretch, but I have no idea what they are adjusting or how they can best be used to reduce the clipping I am seeing in the stretch.  I could use some advise on what the sliders do, and how to utilize them to achieve my desired result.  Thanks