Were you playing with the Large fleets option? There's a known (and fixed for 1.04) bug with options not loading properly in 1.03 - just go into game options again and accept them before starting the save game.

As it turns out, that was the problem! The third save was set to normal fleets/resources/etc when they had been fast and large prior. It's good to know this is known cause it had me befuddled.

My friend continues having minidump issues even after reducing his graphics settings. I suppose I could try reducing mine, but the game runs perfect 99% of the time at full settings. The only time it lags like a mother is when the advent bubble ships are present.

I found another oddity in the game. The phasic stuff seems to turn off my buildings! Now this is fine and good when being attacked in preservation is needed, but they remained off long after there were no longer threats in the area. This caused several of my planets to "turn" because the media centers were off. It would be nice if they would automatically go phased when they are being attacked and only when they are being attacked. Things like frigate factories and hanger bays are needed when the planet is being attacked and should not shut off. Anyway, I hope this gets resolved because trying to manage 50 planets with their media centers and such shutting down and staying shut down is really annoying.

Thanks again for letting me know about that bug! 1.04 FTW!

As far as the minidumps, just send it to support@ironcladgames.com - don't send each one since they're most likely to be the same thing, but that way Ironclad can take a look and either fix it or get back to you with what you can do.

For phasic barrier, that's always how it worked, part of a mechanic. There've been suggestions to improve it and get it to turn itself off, though

Got an odd runtime error last night. Game locked up and window came up saying runtime error. No other information.

As for the minidumps, what am I supposed to send? I dont see any log files or such. Maybe I'm just missing something. The minidump window doesnt give any more info then "minidump error" and an "ok" button.

Finally, after a while the side scrolling seems to lock up. Now I've attributed this problem to zooming way out and scrolling to one of the sides as far as the game limits. Then zooming in prevents movement in the adjacent 3 directions, but the opposite direction can be moved in. It's really odd and annoying. Anyway, better to post things then not.

Thanks!

The error itself tells you where it saves the file.

Normally it would, but this one just comes up as a "Visual Studio C++" that says "runtime error..." and no links or file paths to speak of. It only tells me that there was an error and nothing about the error specifically. It's an oddity in Vista that I've seen a few times on different programs (not the same error, but the fact that it comes up with a window telling me that there was an error).

Any other suggestions?

Have you installed any mods?

Nope, no mods.

People have been posting that the new Nvidia beta drivers are fixing a lot of problems - is your friend using an Nvidia card? Might be worth a shot.

Just for clarification, a C++ Runtime error is not a minidump, minidumps are called just that and the error message always contains where it was saved

nono, I know, I've gotten 2 different errors at different times. One says minidump and the other is the C++ runtime error.

We are both using nvidia drivers which may be the issue. Unfortunately this OS was through HP or whatever and it wont let me update drivers directly for some odd reason. I go to install driver and it just crashes out saying it cant install.

But anyway, the minidump only seems to happen at an autosave. I know this because the prior autosave is almost exactly 15 mins before the crash which seems to be the frequency of the autosave.

Runtime error seems to happen about the same time, but in place of the minidump. It's wierd. Anyway, we'll see how 1.04 works.

Same has occurred to myself and two other friends. We played a game for over an hour (LAN, three of us, various levels of hardware), but it crashed immediately after an autosave once, for all three of us simultaneously. Then, we loaded up the autosave, and it happened again. We tried an earlier save, but after a while it would just happen again. We tried changing graphics settings and host, but nothing helped. Also, now my game won't launch at all without a minidump popping up before even getting to the first screen. I repaired install, did nothing. I uninstalled and reinstalled, and it seemed to be working. However, once I added the 1.03 update, it began crashing again. Hope 1.04 comes soon.

Let me relate my experience here.

1. Playing with 3 IT professionals, 1 network engineer (myself), 1 systems engineer, 1 desktop support.
2. 2 of the systems are Q6600 quad cores and 1 an E6750.
3. I am running XP SP2, one running Vista Ultimate SP1, one running Vista Home SP1.
4. We all love sins and have had so many issues that one of us sold his two NVIDIA cards and got a an ATI 3870. Now all 3 of us have ATI 3870's.
5. All of us have 4 gig of ram although mine is limited by XP to 3.25.
6. We kill all tasks save Ventrillo and Sins during all gaming attempts.
7. We Minidump EVERY GAME. EVERY GAME. Our systems admin goes through the mindumps and scans them. I check the network/firewall. We all put ourselves in the DMZ. We have tried on Ironclad online, we have tried on the LAN with all of us bringing our PC's, and we have tried via hamachi.
8. This game is seriously flawed. None of us have found a solution and we are all in the field with seperate areas of expertise. We all love this game and desperately want to play it, are all fans of Stardock's ethos and prior games.

That said, we all find it intolerable that we cannot get this game to work regardless of our expertise levels and methods tried. One of us actually dumped money to get an ATI card just to get this game to work. Here we sit waiting weeks and we are still unable to play after paying for a game that should work. Meanwhile I'm seeing the focus of the patches on game balance and such when there are huge quantities of users that simply cannot play the game that have made great efforts to play it. I know that stardock is working on it but they should be shifting all of their efforts to ironing out their multiplayer bugs at this stage. Here comes the third week in a row that we want to get together and play this game that we have spent days of time troubleshooting, replaced hardware over, etc. and we are unable to do so. I am rapidly losing faith in Stardock/ICO over this. If someone can tell me something else that we can try I would be game...but at this point I will have to say that our collective assessment is that the game is broken in multiplayer period. Please prove me wrong so that I can stop being frustrated and get on with playing this great game.

Have you emailed support@ironcladgames.com with your info and minidumps?

They have said that there are 2 known crashes that need to be fixed on their end that they hope to get into 1.1, perhaps yours is one of them.

Yes, my compatriots submitted Minidumps. Seeing that we have waited 3 weeks and no 1.4...and 1.4 isn't even addressing the issues...how many months are we expected to wait to play a game we purchased at release? As a purchaser of a game what should my expectation be? 1.1 could be a month or month(s) out. Is this all acceptable?

I agree with shaft for the most part. However I would be satisfied if 1.02 was still available for download.