OK. I've done some further testing, and have determined that the presence of the Nova#shadow is coincidence. It seems to be a collision thing. I started up a mission, turned, and rammed anything nearby, and got a CTD. In most instances, the start=CTD happens when I'm starting in a fighterbay. For one of the missions, I changed it to starting just in front of a ship, and had no problems. Then I turned around sharply and it CTDed. I thought that perhaps it had something to do with certain textures coming on screen, so I tried viewing the model in other missions with no problems. Then I retried the same mission, put some distance between me and the launching ship, then came back around and things went smoothly. My guess is that my sharp turn put my wingmen (who had 'guard Alpha 1' as their orders) were closer to the ship and hit it, causing the crash. Flew a few more missions that were giving no problems, then rammed into the Nova#guns, and had a CTD. I thought that maybe it was with THAT model, but then I tried another random mission and rammed an EA transport, and got a CTD. Either its the collision itself, or something about playing the sound. Either way, it's something that was introduced for this build. Oct. 21st runs smoothly.