Anyone else crashing to desktop mid game?

[Maniak_Medic]

Has happened to me now relatively frequently, with multiplayer and single.
Is there some information recorded I can look at/post for review?

Not getting a pop-up or anything visual that I've noticed at the time of crash.
Win 10, reasonable settings, yada yada.

[annaliseh]

With game music still playing in the background?

[Maniak_Medic]

From memory - I get the dull bing noise, like a not responding pop up, and am booted into the desktop. Music from the game stops playing at the same time and there isn't a tab along the windows bar to show the game.
But don't get to see any error message.

[annaliseh]

I had this a bit when I had the GTX580 graphics card especially towards the end when I had to upgrade to GTX960. After that the problems seem to stop. In this house, all 3 cards (GTX580s) exibited the same kind of problem. Then one totally failed. I get the idea that if the card is not quite up to quality build this happens a fair bit.

But if you are running the game with mods you may have to look there first.

[Maniak_Medic]

Fair enough - I'm 670 so that could be the issue, from your description. Maybe.
No mods, only the DLC. Though it does only seem to have occured after the latest DLC.

[annaliseh]

It is something most that gamers don't quite get the idea of "quality control".

Take the old GTX580s for example:

The one that totally failed did so playing SIMS 3.

The second one played up considerably less but the system did strange things

The one in my system did the same symptoms as yours is doing but on occasions it would do a blue screen and rarely a black screen. The computer would reboot and then it couldn't find hardware. I had to turn off the system for about 90 seconds - then it would boot fine.

It seems as the mechancis to the games get more demanding, the build quality of the GPU begins to show its "cracks." And it doesn't matter the age of the GPU, its make (Nvidia or AMD), or model. Say 10000 cards are made of the GTX580, 10% fail outright, 10% are borderline but work ok and eventually fail, another 10% are ok but exhibit funny symptoms, while the 70% are mostly flawless. This is mass production at its best.

the above applies to most items mass produced, railway boggies, cars, watches, microwaves and etc,.

[AdmiralLavarne]

I've had this happen only 1 time so far and I found a potential fix in the strangest of places. I was reading the install instructions for the Sins of a Galactic Empire mod (Star Wars) and it said to have Anti-Aliasing and Bloom turned off which helps stabilize the game. Now technically those instructions were for the mod itself but I did that for the stock Rebellion game and now my laptop not only has significant heat reduction, I'm able to play a whole day and half a night no crashes/freezes just the occasional lag but the game holds itself together.

So I humbly reccomend trying that in the main menu, Anti-Aliasing and Bloom turned off. To turn them off, uncheck those little green boxes and hopefully this will help you like it helped me. Also, try setting the visuals from High to Low like a staircase and I did this it seems to help with rendering and puts less strain on my GPU. I could be wrong but it seems Sins was designed to have only the ships, planets, etc at High detail while all the rest (like bumps) set low or medium.

Hope it helps, good luck and happy hunting.

[Maniak_Medic]

Nope, sadly that doesn't seem to have changed my fate either.
Did wonder if it was playing as the Advent which was doing it (as it has happened each time playing as them) - apparantly not. Just died on it's arse whilst playing as Vasari.
Will continue experiementing - see if anything solves it.

[AdmiralLavarne]

Sorry to hear my hints didn't work, not sure what else it could be. I do know those Titan class ships seem to use alot of proccessing power given their size and numerous visual effects. I nearly crashed to a mini-dump again last night, had a Ragnarok Titan versus Advent Rebels Titan and just zooming in to have a look sent me to desktop, somehow the game didn't crash fully and I was able to just tap the taskbar icon and was still going. Makes me wonder if the in-game physics engine is under too much stress which seems odd given this game isn't much different than Diplomacy and only has relatively few new in-game additions.

My current theory is the Titan ships alone destablize things because when I have zero Titans (me plus any AI) the game runs fine but let there be more than one built and mobile things just slowly destabilize. Given the restriction on how many can be built/owned I have a feeling I may be right. I personally can't stand them, seems as though the devs of the game were trying to compete with all the popular mods for previous Sins titles (for example Star Dreadnoughts=Star Wars mods) which were basically the-then 'Titan' classes, atleast beyond something like a Novalith Cannon.

[Maniak_Medic]

Conversly, I love the titans - but then I only played with capital ships before the titans were introduced. Kept the smaller ships to a minimum. (Still do.)
Had another ♥♥♥♥ around with the effect settings. Dropped them down further than I'd done previously, in my arrogant visual desire. All seems stable, for now. Touch wood.
Will carry on playing with the settings to see if I can get any of the pretty back without the CTD's. But it's good news for me atleast.

[annaliseh]

Originally posted by Maniak_Medic:

Conversly, I love the titans - but then I only played with capital ships before the titans were introduced. Kept the smaller ships to a minimum. (Still do.)
Had another ♥♥♥♥ around with the effect settings. Dropped them down further than I'd done previously, in my arrogant visual desire. All seems stable, for now. Touch wood.
Will carry on playing with the settings to see if I can get any of the pretty back without the CTD's. But it's good news for me atleast.

which makes it less demanding on your GPU.

I play with Titans, single and multiplayer system is quite stable. A few times I been kicked to the desktop but all I had to do then was to click on the sins-window in the status bar which put me right back where I was.

Nvidia keeps reminding me there is an update driver available and update settings for games - I ignore them. As the saying goes, "If it aint broke don't poke!"