I've emailed about this in the past and was recommended to delete the OctaneRender_settings.oczdb. This may have helped temporarily but the problem always returns. I'm posting here to see if anyone else has experienced this and has a solution.
It's obviously not the end of the world to have to rebuild the scene each time. It's a minor inconvenience having to readjust camera focus and wait for the rebuild to occur. Also the option to spot render is removed if you don't notice that the scene didn't update until after the render is finished... although that seems more like the user being at fault
