Tip 9 - Clutter 

When you're game is well under way, unless you're playing with very few opponents your map may get overwhelming.  A very simple way I've found to deal with it is to turn off stars and nebulas (see below).  It made it much easier to concentrate on the tasks at hand and didn't draw my eyes away. Since you have to restart to see the difference I thought I'd just show you here. 

       ^{Stars & Nebulas On                    Stars & Nebulas Off}

Tip 10 - Interface Options

In the picture below you'll see my preferred interface settings.  Two settings I have highlighted that may not be clear is the following:

Tactical View Zoom Level - When you zoom out, this is when the your 3d-models (ships & planets) switch to 2d icons. Tactical zoom is perfect to use when you want to quicly scan the entire map for your enemies ships.  I also use it a lot to locate freighters.

Detail Animations Zoom Level - This is the zoom level at which some animations turn on/off.  For example, if you turn it down to 1 (all the way to the left), then you won't see your ships hovering animation.

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Tip 11 - Game Options 

Nothing to explain, just my personal preferences.  If you have a machine with my speed or a dual core machine make sure you check the cpu option.  I have zero slow-down with everything maxed out.

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Tip 12 - Video Options 

Beneath the pic for my personal options, you'll find my system specs.  Once again, I never have any slowdown so if your system is even close to mine, you should be able to play with all your settings maxed.  Throttle Frame rate will help keep your video card from overheating.  It does not slow the frame rate down, so don't worry about it making your game look less impressive.

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My system Specs:

• Win XP Home SP2
• AMD Athlon 64 FX57 (2.8 GHz)
• 2 Gig 3200 (400 MHz) RAM
• ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
• DFI NForce4 Ultra motherboard
• 22" monitor running the game at 1600x1200
• 4x FSAA set in-game only
• 16x anisotropic filtering (16x AF) set in video control panel.
• Creative Labs X-Fi Gamer.

In ~30 hours of play with the current build released 2/9/2007 (v1.50.059), I've only had one minor crash.  So it's been extremely stable even with tons of alt-tabbing.  If you're crashing a lot, or having graphic issues make sure you have your latest video drivers.  If you have an NVIDIA card and Windows Vista you're probably seeing all kinds of issues.  This is not the game, but NVIDIA's drivers.  NVIDIA was somehow wholly unprepared for Vista's release, and there are tons of games that aren't functioning correctly strictly due to driver issues.

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