...well to a certain extend, CTD's are to be expected .. save often and at important moments, taking into account that ubisoft rushed this thing, and people are using their spare time to fix this game.
I get a CTD every hour or two of actualy playing .. time spend alt+tab-ed does not seem to matter. Using a lot of high TC seems to speed it up. Saving often seems to keep it at bay longer. I've not yet pinpointed the issue, but people using Magui seem not to have it as often if they use 'researched' modlists. Perhaps there is a memory leak or devide by 0 or other bug in the python code .. or an unintended effect that's difficult to replicate that throws an unhandled exception. There's a million options.
It also seems to be linked to ships getting into contact range or getting loaded onto the grid for lack of a better term .. detected by any of the sensors perhaps. But this is all based on a few isolated crashes not that well researched.
I tried to make an effort to pinpoint another CTD scenario .. and ended up with the bug mysteriously vanishing. sh5 is unpredictable .. feces happens untill it stops happening or someone get's lucky and has a Eureka moment
It would help if you always post a modlist for reference, and try to reproduce the error first .. if we can not reproduce it, there is no way in silent hunt....ehr.. hell, that we will magically guess what's wrong unless your modlist or order is the issue.