I don't know whats gone wrong, but since this last patch, the further I get into a game, the more choppy it gets. I've got a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 machine, a gig of ram and a Radeon 9600XT video card, but sometimes I have to play it down at 800X600, rather than the 1280X1024 it "recommends" with the auto detect, to even make it borderline playable. At the beginning of the game, it flies, absolutely no problems at all, but as I progress further, especially in space battles with asteroid fields, or on planets with weather effects, the gameplay slows to a slide show.

Are you guys having this happen? It reminds me of the old memory leak bug that Birth of the Federation had. Any advice? I can't find much online about it, though it appears chop is something that at least a few people are experiencing.

It is memory leak. Only way to fix it is to exit the game when it starts and restart it.

You are kidding!!! Is this confirmed? Is it happening to others also? Are they gonna patch it?

I haven't had any problems with a memory leak. However I did have problems with the demo and full version installed at the same time. I am surprised the first patch didn't fix it. However that it slipped through the testing I can imagine. In case it is a memory leak.