Hi

The game slows down to ridiculous levels when I play it. It can get as bad as a frame every 10 seconds.

The thing is this doesn't always happen, but most of the time. What tends to happen normally is it lags a little when you first start a map but then it speeds up after a few minutes and it's fine. I have ran it on a map of 14 planets and I had a full fleet and attacked the Pirates (and their fleet is obviously huge) and it ran fine, yet sometimes, I mean most times, it will run pathetically slow when I barely started a new game or even loaded an old one! At the beginning of loading an old game or starting a new one it will go as fast as when it's going to be ok, but then it will slow down, more and more until over a few minuts it's gone from running a little slow to as I've said, one frame every 10 seconds!! Restarting doesn't fix it bizarrely enough! It's like it's in a mood or something. What's going on??

Surely if it was my computer being slow, when I would quit to the menu it should speed back up, but no, it's just as s low through the menus even when I've quit the game. I went to desktop and opened task manager and it took up 1.5GB of memory, I mean even Oblivion doesn't take up that much! Is it some sort of memory leak?

I've tried the game on lower res / quality to the point of putting it on minimum everything and it's just as slow. I've tried with with everything (internet, zone alarm, everything) in windows closed, apart from the graphics drivers. I've also tried it on a different partition with a different copy of windows xp pro and again, just as bad.

I've got the 1.04 patch, and it is slow with and without the patch.

My system:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2 GHz

1GB RAM

ASUS A8N Deluxe

Powercolor RADEON X800XL 256MB, latest drivers.

SB LIVE! Value sound

Windows XP Pro SP2 genuine with all updates, also got latest Direct X.

My system is VERY well ventilated with several 12cm fans and copper heatsinks on both cpu and graphics so it's not that either.

Thanks in advance,

Inimbrium