So, I keep crashing to desktop in the battle screen, and I finally figured out that it only happens if there are multiple events going on at the same time, such as a battle and a colonization (or star base upgrade), battle and an invasion or multiple battles/invasions at the same time.  After the last one (challenged by multiple fleets), I decided to hit the Escape key while the battle was still running in the background (I could hear it but not see it).  When I did that, I got a popup box that said the following:

CarmorElement::ValidateTexture FAILED:  texture model asset Armor_Texture_01.dds referenced by FXElement HullPlatingArmor.

I don't know if that is helpful to the devs or not, but I thought I would pass it along anyway.