I love this game. It is the best 4x space conquest-economics-diplomacy-everything game I've ever seen, and I've played quite a number of them in various formats spanning decades.

One thing I remembered is that you should avoid using the top save slot. If you do the game crashes from that point on and you will need to reinstall. That's the only bug I know of -- and it just flashed in my brain when that issue happened. An ancient gaming voice came into my skull and whispered, "Don't uuussseee the topppp slot to save-ave-ave-ave ooooo."

Quite honestly I dreamed of this game off and on for a long time, having lost it and computer access due to life issues. I am completely stoked I have Fragile Allegiance again. This game is competing for my attention with games that have come out in the past few months.

Fragile Allegiance is a 10 out of 10. A truly remarkable game.

Do you have any idea where to find a decent tutorial/manual for it?

I've been watching some guy on Youtube named Acciyn, he has a multi-video tutorial that's pretty long but I was able to understand what was going on and got the basic game down from just the first one or two.

I've saved in the top slot and run the game, got quite a few hours logged on it now, over several sessions. Yet no crashing.
Are you sure it's this FA and not some other game you're thinking of?

This game is simple..

Just get more colonists on each asteroid..
Build an engine on 'em and set course for one of the corners of the screens..
Once there have two asteroids built for fighting only (full of guns and anti missiles..)
Use those as 'patrols'..

Once you see an asteroid..bomb it flat..get a colship there and build an engine and one of each basic groups (air, water, food, housing)
And so on..keep building ships (the bigger the better..).. don't sell any mining goods..
You need most of those to build ships..
Only sell the expensive ones..(reds..)

Keep capturing and moving the asteroids..
since there's no asteroids in range to attack ur pop asteroids..the only ones they can attack are the ones you have ur fleets on..
the ones with the guns and the anti missiles..
So..

Keep doing that, and the others will soon bow to ur will..

(and yes..tutorial ?..don't need one..or I just gave you one..)