Gratuitous Space Battles requires a screen resolution height of 768 pixels or greater. If you have a netbook (small laptop) there is a good chance that it will not run the game. Do not buy the game, if you only intend to play it on a machine that has a small (under 768) height screen! I recommend downloading and trying the demo first if you think your PC is too old or low-spec to run the game.

I strongly advise you to get the latest drivers for your video card before playing the game. It really can make a significant difference. It might also help to turn off any programs running in the background. If you have a firewall that blocks games access to the internet, you might want to tell it how to handle GSB one way or the other, before running the game for the first time, as sometimes firewalls can make fullscreen games appear to 'hang' while they wait for a response.

There is a discussion of what PC's can and cannot run the game on my blog here:

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=339

Some people are running the game on a Mac or on Linux using WINE and other such systems. Although this is officially unsupported by us, we have heard that it runs well on such systems. However, please do check our forums and read what other players have to say before buying/pre-ordering if you do not have a windows PC to play the game.

Performance

If the game goes slow when you try and speed up battle playback, go to 'options' and turn off 'pitch shift'. Or upgrade your sound card drivers to the latest version

Collecting Debug Data

The game writes debug logs, uincluding a history of any errors encountered, to the fiollowing locations: \My Documents\My Games\Gratuitous Space Battles\debug
or on older versions...
\Program Files\Gratuitous Space Battles\debugdata

Problems installing expansion packs and patches

The expansion pack and patch installers do NOT know where the game is installed and default to the location that the direct-bought game installs by default. If you purchased the base game through Steam, Impulse or another third party, or changed it's install location, you MUST ensure that the installers path is changed to be the correct one, by hitting the browse button during install.