I enjoyed the demo so I got the game. Now, as soon as my first capital ship engages the first enemy, that is that. Mini Dump, crashes, and actually even removes my desktop background.

I have tried removing Autosave games, I have tried deleting all the replays, I have tried looking through the forums. Seems this is an extremely pervasive issue. Mostly in multiplayer games, but I cannot even play the single player in order to get somewhat proficient to the point where I can play a multiplayer game (which will just crash anyway).

There is just no way to get past the game crashing about three minutes into single player.

I am so disappointed I cannot even tell you. I did not even use apostrophes in this post to show Stardock just how darn upsetting this is. Why make a game, or a patch for a game, that causes you to not even be able to play it? Why are they not making this their top priority until it's fixed? This is ridiculous and I just feel like I want my forty bucks plus tax, the four dollars in gas it took me to drive to the mall to buy the game, and an hour of my life back which is of course priceless, but I'll accept $12.50 for it, bringing the grand total to $59.20. I'm not including the hours I've spent trying to get this piece of garbage to work. I'm feeling magnanimous.

That is what this game really costs. What is it worth? Well, what's three minutes of extremely nervous playing leading up to ten or fifteen minutes of pure frustration worth?

Why is it that making a video game worth playing seems to be the most impossible thing in the world these days? Computers get more and more complex, but game developers seem to be outsourcing the programming to Sri Lanka for all the tech support and just plain crap we encounter on a daily basis just trying to be good consumers and have a little fun while we're at it.

QUALITY, people. Fix your product.

P.S. - The diplomacy is pretty great.  I feel almost as if there's another empire there on the other end of the line.