tarrith A couple of nice large ships and the game literally grinds to a halt.
How large and how many? Also, what version of the game agree your playing? The latest couple versions had large performance improvements. My laptop (which is pretty nice but not a gaming laptop) can run a 4v4 Terror battle at about 30fps.
tarrith Maybe have it so the crew visuals can be turned off.
I guarantee you that crew graphics are not the problem. A simple way to confirm is to pause the game. If your fps improves a lot, then it's the game simulation that's the bottleneck, not the graphics.