Hi Soloquiem,

I imagine Intel will be updating the driver for the Intel HD 4000 with the above fixes, but there's no telling when. It might be a good idea to ask here.

-Exhumer

Thanks for the info Exhumer.

Exhumer, thank you very much!!

Well I got the new driver and updated the game to the test 1.03 patch. I reset my computer settings to allow Win8.1 deal with managing the game needs. I played for roughly 3 hours before another freeze occurred. This is a huge improvement. 

Ill play around with the settings and things next to see what else I can do to try and get this to work.

I have the same issue, but I think I found the problem.

When I zoom out, instead playing with a minimal interface, the game runs fine. No freezes or anything. But the moment I zoom in, the game freezes. Well, just the screen. The music still plays and I can even click buttons. I've tried it on multiple computers and it's the same thing, so I know it's not my computer that's the problem. It's got to be some interface issue. I just hope it gets worked out in the future.

I no longer have this problem.  The game did get updated, and I updated a few things on my side. I did notice when I was having the problem my computer was using all 6 gigs of my ram. Now it's been using less than that.  

Either way, game runs great now.

I think I will try a fresh install again. I am still having the same problem. The game is a blast though.

You may wish to take a more serious look at the OS's page file settings ("virtual memory" settings). I think the default settings are inappropriate for 64 bit games, and that Microsoft has some catchup to do since 64 bit games are quite new.

As a start, I suggest that the "virtual memory" setting values be set to 1*RAM for the initial swap file size and at least 3*RAM for the maximum size. With the largest map sizes, you may find that these settings need to be enlarged as you gain more experience with 64 bit games. (Also remember that the swap file is used for more than just backing up virtual memory.)

I had my virtual memory minimum set to 100,000 Mb and my max to 700,000 mb at one point and I still experienced the same in game freeze. I can play for hours, then the game freezes and you can still hear music, if you are adept at blind mousing over buttons, you can even hear the game continuing behind the frozen screen. 

I have now tried everything recommended by Stardock and by the community as a whole. I know the team is working on another big patch and I am sure they are hard at work fixing some of these issues. 

The fresh install did not help any whatsoever. It should be noted I am experiencing this on Small and Tiny maps. 

I tried the disabling of the firewall. Disabling all Dropbox/OneNote services. Disabling McAfee AntiVirus. I have updated my Intel driver to the top of the line driver, beyond what HP allows. I have literally done as much as humanly possible to get this game to work.

I am not concerned, I have a diversified portfolio of games I play, so it is not a big deal to me. I will await the dev team to handle it. They have been very quick to put out updates thus far and I look forward to other useful things such as the Steam Workshop. All the pretty ships .... 

100,000 MB sounds a bit excessive.  Are you playing more than one game at a time? You mentioned earlier that you are using a laptop. Do you have a CPU temperature monitor running? Is it possible the temperature is running up to the point where the CPU automatically throttles down the clock speed until the CPU cools some?

I am using a laptop and I do have HP CoolSense running in the background. Interesting, didn't think of that problem. I will take a look and see what I can about that. 

Thank you.

I must admit, I find it unconscionable that the developers have known about this issue since nearly day one and it hasn't been fixed.  I've had the problem on two different computers.  All the suggestions here I've tried, I've got a brand new power gaming computer, and the lockouts happen more than a dozen times during the game.  

It's not memory related.  I very much doubt it's video board related.  The game is pretty much unplayable out of frustration, especially when you've traded with all the players and then it locks, so you have to repeat all those decisions.  

But in the interest of furthering a solution to this game breaker problem, I got a debug dialog from deep within the system.  Here's what it says (in typical cryptic programmer geek-speak):

CbeamElement:: ValidateTexture FAILED:  texture model asset BeamParticle.dds referenced by FXElement BeamParticle_Beam

Maybe there are some bad textures in there or maybe bad references to textures.  Anyway, if I hear this has been fixed in a future patch, I'll go back to the game, otherwise it's mothballed.