This is actually the first crash I have had during the Beta. Good Job!

Prior to the crash, I noticed that the GNN was getting forgetful. The last three turns before the crash, most or all of my ship production was not being reported by GNN and was not getting the Icons along the side of the main screen.

While I am writing here I want to give my overall impression of Dark Avatar. I had almost given up on the game before I got Dark Avatar, because I felt as if I had 'solved' it with my influence strategy (I have a post up about it in the strategies section). My first Gigantic-Abundant game has left me happily more challenged. The Korath especially were able to keep up with me economically and militarily early in the game. I have for the first time ever lost planets to a rival civilization through influence.

Observations:
The loading turn influence values are still wrong. This is a holdover from Dread Lords, but it is having more of an effect with the defection of asteroid fields. I am finding it a very different game if I play ten turns in a row than if it is broken up into five segments with reloads every two turns. Every world of mine that threatened to rebel has been after a reload, and the worlds that have flipped have been right after a reload, before the influence values have gone back to normal.

The supermanipulator ability has a flaw early on in that civs started declaring war on each other like crazy before anyone had any military. This lead to two major civs surrendering before any shots were fired, including the supermanipulator! This leads me to believe that if I could get an early jump in military (which I did in this game) and just declare war on everyone before they had built a military, most of the galaxy would self destruct by surrendering to everyone else before the game had really started.

As far as I can tell I have had three mega events.

The Yor got the 'Everyone loves you!' influence increase, which made them a much tougher opponent to crack with an influence strategy. No complaints.

I also got the 'Everyone thinks you are taking over with influence' event, which makes my strategy even harder. Couldn't complain much, because they were right!

Then I got the 'Everyone hates taxes and loves trade' event and none of the AIs ever recovered. Up until that point the Korath had been keeping up with me and the Torians were not far behind. Now everyone has been left in the dust and the game is a forgone conclusion. If I had not gotten the influence nerfing event the game would be already done. As it is, I love the micromanagement and have not bothered to go aggressive and start taking out civs or the game would be mine already.

The new spy system looks really promising, but if you play a passive aggressive style like I do, they are not really useful. I would add my voice to those asking for a place to put agents so that they are not actively sabotaging other civs in order to get intelligence. A sleeper agent graphic on the diplomacy screen where the espionage slider used to be perfect or a place to put them on the spying screens at the top would be great. Just my two cents worth.

I hope that this helps nail down some things for you.

Scincerely,
Scintor