This seems to happen quite often when I play. Here is what happens when I play.

The effects will be going great for a while but then it will get to a point where it stops showing ship explosions, only debree is shown. When TEC and Advent bombard a planet, the explosions are not fully shown, so with the TEC a red glow will appear where their nukes hit, but no explosion. Also effects of weapon hits are not shown, so no energy discharges where a ship gets hit at. Now it will randomly fix it self in game for a bit, but then it will repeat the process. Reloading the game also helps for a bit.

Now my computer meets and beats the recommended requirements for the game. Here are my specs that should pertain to the game.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU  T9300 @ 2.5GHz  2.5GHz

Memory: 4.00 GB RAM

Hard Drive: 220 GB

Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce 8600GT

OS: Vista Home Premium 32-bit (I don't think having a 32 bit should kill it)

I have all the updated drivers and everything. Would playing at a lower resolution help?