Alliance are a serie of different mods. On the Star Wars GC, you can play the civil war Empire vs Rebel era + Black Sun and soon the Republic and CIS.
You can see how I continue playing a Galactic Conflict with the Republic against all factions. Lately even I have developed a system with the Smallpox/Freege Defreezer for avoid the global error and the zero bytes problem, in fact I think how both problems are the same problem because the Defreeze can fix them. It is easy, when you see the zero bytes autosave, you must defreeze the previous autosave or savegame file, you will be able continue the game. Just remember how if you defreeze a autosave, most of the times when you load the defreeze autosave, you will not see units in the battle and you should retreat or wait to the retreat from the enemy.
Remember, if you like the ground battles at EAW, vote now at this poll Firefoxccmods.com
What a mess on minimap...
Yes but with this amount of planets and following a realistic configuration from the SW galaxy, it can not be made better.
I got what you meant, but the word 'realistic' is a bit too much don't you think ;)