A new city gets you +6 to every resource at the cost of some loyalty. Drop a new loyalty building in every city whenever you build a new city and you stay ahead by far. New cities let you specialize, especially with Astra Militarum and their edicts. Build one city near Ore Fields, build lots of ore ...

I reloaded and did not fire the missile at the kastellen robot. Game played fine. A few turns later I fired a missile from a different fortress and hit a dakkajet and everything worked fine.

Here is the dxdiag file

Using 1.07 GoG version

Got a crash when I launch a missile from the tier ten upgraded fortress. Closed game and when I reloaded the same thing happened when I launch the missile.