I am fairly disappointed. If it really does break everyone's game experience, why do we have access to large fleet sizes and huge maps at all? Seems redundant.
The large fleet and huge maps are for me only 
Have just finish a huge multistar game, with gfx setting on very high ( planet on high )... using 9 AI who are 9 different race, with the 7DS patner mod ( almost one gb size in 7zip format )... only difference with everybosy is that i use Linux ( not supported by Stardock ) for these mod, too much mini-dump ( memory limit ) or slowdown with windows...
Never forget that between your material and the game, you have the bios ( some are "defect" ), windows ( KB repair problem but sometime create new one ) and driver ( at sins release time, the nvidia was faulty ), directX and numerous dll... material itself or other software can be in some case a problem... 3 example from the readme file :
* If you're using Windows Vista, you MUST have speakers or headphones plugged in or the
game will crash.
* Folding@Home will cause the game to crash. Please exit the Folding application before playing.
* If you have a USB Missile Launcher, please detach it before playing the game or it will
crash the game.
It is why devs need a max of informations for resolve problem... maybe all the people who have problem now have something in common... can be a codex loaded in ram, or any other application running... or a very specific piece of hardware... if the code was so bad, everybody will have the problem...
What really need Stardock is a system like Bugzilla, allowing people with problem to make some entry, adding a lot of info about their system... posting problem on a forum is cute but it is not a profesional way to track problem and resolve them...
EDIT : one of the reason that in my case, it work better on Lunx is maybe my Xeon... on windows, i have 2 processor with 4 core... on linux, i have 2 processor with 8 core... these 8 core by processor are not real, it is the hyperthreading... on desktop computer, old single core processor ( pentium 4 with netburst architecture ) have hyper threading... dual core and core duo have not the hyperthreading...
For application running on one core where hyperthreading is possible, around 15% of speed is win... in case of artificial intelligence algorithms, speed win can reach 30%...
For the next generation of multicore, the i7, hyperthreading will be reintroduce in processor...
So, a old p4 prescoot 2M from 2005, running at 3.6 or 3.8 ghz with hyperthreading will have around 200% more power for sins that recent multicore processor... and if i am right, sins will run like a rocket on the new i7 processor with hyperthreading...
Boys, never think that new technology is always the best... my old ddr2 using a serial connection reach 32 gb/s ... modern ddr3 1600 have only 12.8 gb/s ... with so slow transfrer speed, processor starve for data...
EDIT 2 : People with a AMD Phenom and Vista can have problem with single-threaded applications... these can run on a core that is idling at half-speed... this is corrected in the Phenom II...
In theory, the AMD design made sense. If you were running a single threaded application, the core that your thread was active on would run at full speed, while the remaining three cores would run at a much lower speed. AMD included this functionality under the Cool 'n' Quiet umbrella. In practice however, Phenom's Cool 'n' Quiet was quite flawed. Vista has a nasty habit of bouncing threads around from one core to the next, which could result in the following phenomenon (no pun intended): when running a single-threaded application, the thread would run on a single core which would tell Vista that it needed to run at full speed. Vista would then move the thread to the next core, which was running at half-speed; now the thread is running on a core that's half the speed as the original core it started out on.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492&p=6
More, all phenon processor up to and including stepping B2 and BA have a TLB bug who lead to a performance drop of 10%... Sins ask a lot of power... 10% can make the difference between a normal game and a slow game...
