Sorry This looks like a bugger. What is build542? The latest is 534b. I have a crash problem as well but it is specfic. When I start the game when I am online, it crashes. Must be a software conflict with my IP software and the game. A long time ago I read David Ferrel say in a post something about a memory leak in the game.
You might try closing out all unneccessry programs before you start the game. There are only 2 necessary ones. System tra.y I believe and I forget the other. This will rule out a software conflict problem.(usually the result of 2 programs accessing the same memory block at the same time). If it still crashes then there it is something else.
So if its not software it may be a problem with certain ships or something. See if you can load the replay file and try to determine what ships are in the game when it crashed. Sometimes a bad break model will crash a game. If it crashes when a ship blows up, that might be the problem.