Shortly after 08/02/12, I went to my KDF toon to harvest some dilithium. I had not done the T'Kanis Nebula mission in awhile. Imagine my shock when instead of the smooth performance of my middle of the road computer normally gives me, I got the very worst lag and latency issues I've ever seen in any game. I aborted the run and proceeded to check out my install. No issues. Maybe it is my internet connection. Like everyone else, I get bumped for no reason once in awhile. Tried the T'Kanis Nebula again the next day. Same issue. This time I decided to look further into it. Immediately behind and below my spawn point are two very large white blobs which take up a significant fraction of my screen. Whenever my ship or any of my targets were near one of these, the lag issues became insurmountable. To the point where I achieved a Blue Screen of Death/Crash to Desktop issue. Something which is supposed to be nearly improbable with Win7.

Decided to investigate further. The same two ugly blobs are now in place in the Azure Nebula vs. the Romulans, the ChoS Nebula vs. the Cardassians and in the KDF Mirror Event as well. I have found a way to work around them. Which is to turn the graphics settings all the way to their very lowest and reduce the window size to 1024 x 768 pixels. Needless to say, this makes STO looks like the pixelated blobs I used to play against on my Commodore C64 back in the day. For a game which is heavily dependent on eye candy as part of its appeal, this ain't a good thing.

The Blobs resemble something which has been erased by someone using a very old version on Windows Paint. I've no idea why they are there or what caused them. But they are there anyway. I am hesitant to play any of the missions which have them and I am concerned they will multiply. My hesitancy comes from possibly disrupting the play of others.

Before I forget, Dell Inspirion One. AMD vid card. A few tweaks which I've installed myself and a Windows Experience Rating of 4.1. More than sufficient to play this game on the medium settings. I fully realize this post is troll bait. For this I apologize in advance for the irritation they may cause to any who try to help me.