Run some anti-spyware just to be on the safe side. Also, get more RAM. I'm running perfectly good with 1GB of RAM. I do notice that it lags after 4 hours of gaming. But a good reboot fixes it

You shouldn't have to reboot to play a game... memory leaks are an unfortunate and aweful side effect of using C++ to code something

If I were them, I would either invest in a good memory manager (which all good C++ development companies should od), or start using Managed Extensions and get the "big boys" (ie C#) into the mix.... nothing beats a decent Garbage Collector

o0... wierd. I have a gig of ram too, and just played 12 hours straight (finished a game in one go...) , didn't have any slow down problems what-so-ever. Perhaps you should post your debug.err and have some of the more knowledgeable people look around. It might be something specific that is causing it.

I treat every time my graphic card crashes as a sign I should lay off the game for a while.

And it always does, sooner or later.

Yeah and in middle to late game each AI is pumping out tons of ships and of course the game has to keep track of every single one of those ships, calculate the movements and such, all of which takes up progressively more cpu and memory.

Same problem here basically. Found playing on gigantic too much, large is very playable. I think the 512 RAM is the important part, it probably has to do with swapping in and out. Should be getting another 512 tomorrow.

You shouldn't have to reboot to play a game... memory leaks are an unfortunate and aweful side effect of using C++ to code something

Bah. . . Memory leaks occur just as easily in garbage collected languages, too. In C++ you have to remember to deallocate memory. In garbage collected languages you have to remember to clear all references -- especially when two objects reference each other.

Turn off 'follow ship' in the interface settings, and before ending your turn, focus your view on somewhere in the galaxy with less activity. it will speed up each turn a lot.

just save your game after awhile, im running on a 1.25g computer with 712 mb memory with a 256mb video card (geforce fx5700). i have no problems with this game. ( So far i have not found a reason to upgrade my computer it still runs alot of the newest games perfectly.

Tip: If you ever play a game that has a memory leak, run it Windowed. Then alt-tab out occasionally, as this forces windows to reallocate memory. Sounds crazy, I know, but it worked for every game that I can remember that had a memory leak (Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Vampire Masquerade, to name a few).

That being said, I hadn't noticed any memory leaks (but I admit I wasn't looking for them)... but I do see more memory being used as the game continues, especially on larger maps, but that's to be expected. The game crawls for my friend who has only 256mb of memory... still very playable on small maps, but, it does bog down late game.