I have done further updates and further testing. I got the latest drivers for the GeForce GT 650M directly from the GeForce website, just to confirm that is NOT the problem.
I also started a new campaign to see if there was any difference in behavior. What I found is that the problem with selecting fleets grows in time. A campaign at the start allows one to rapidly select fleets without difficulty, but later in the game, the time it takes to select a fleet grows and grows. Eventually, the act of selecting a fleet simply causes the game to crash.
There is some growing amount of data associated with selecting a fleet that eventually overwhelms the system one is working on, and the but is reliably reproducible even with the latest drivers. This bug ONLY impacts the System Map fleet selection, and it happens even when the system is powerful enough to handle the actual battles.
Crash Files: 0_1550323306240_UE4CC-Windows-78F9A95A4CE6B051B3AD8C8CF9565793_0000.zip
Save file: 0_1550323390647_End round auto save.sav
DxDiag system info: 0_1550323441581_DxDiag3.txt
Load the save file, and click fleets 10-15 times and the game crashes every time. It is even reproducible by clicking the same fleet repeatedly.
Please do not dismiss this issue as being merely attributed to my graphics card. This has all the symptoms of a memory leak, and my card merely exposes a problem that impacts everyone faster. The rendering thread is timing out due to the massive amount of garbage memory it has to sift through which is added to every time a fleet is clicked on.