If you're playing this on a lower-end system then you have probably gone through the same issues as I have, chief among them being crashes/freezing due to low memory. I have taken the time to test some things and have found a few different ways to minimize this bloat and maximize your session time, with some added bonuses along the way. Some, if not most. of the the stuff here should help your play experience even if you're playing on a rig better suited for something like this. DO NOTE that everything in this guide so far has only been tested on the Sapphire textgen. I will update this accordingly if I ever test it out on any of the other models.

This guide isn't a technical guide. I won't be telling you to hunt down ZombieHandles to lower your memory usage and I won't have you sifting through your task manager. If you feel your issue lies there maybe I'll make a guide for that but for now we gonna focus on reducing the game's workload.

I also won't be discussing any of the textgen options in the menu as there's already a guide covering that.

What do I mean by this? I mean if you know you don't have the RAM, paint a tighter picture. One of my favorite homemade prompts, "RoboFlop" (I'll be uploading it to the workshop soon) involves being an ordinary citizen in Detroit after OCP shuts down the RoboCop program. It calls in so many NPC's between locations, chiefly because it is attempting to recreate a crime-ridden metropolis. The map becomes massive, with few built-in dead ends. My computer HATES this.

When I tried compartmentalizing the prompt (I essentially walled off a few blocks of the city and set my story in this area) things changed immediately. There were more dead ends in the map (thankfully you always have the option of continuing into the same map section and adding new locations if you need them) and the number of npc's i encountered dropped considerably. This, in turn, let me play longer before I finally experienced a crash.

If you've got low memory, write a tighter story. Keep it efficient and compact. Narrow the scope of your adventure, you will find that there is room for large and grandiose events even in the smallest story. Know what you're going for, be blunt about it and let the AI fill in the gaps.

Creative mode, regardless of how you feel about it, is definitely the most powerful tool you have.
In order to keep your story focused I recommend deleting certain plot points/story moments/npc as you see fit in order to keep the story focused. The AI WILL try to throw curveballs into your story, no matter how tight you construct. During one of my prompts, "Red Nebula" (you wake up alone on a mining ship after a few thousand years of cryosleep to discover the whole crew gone except the for the ship's AI and a hologram of the Captain. Yes, it's Red Dwarf without the laugh track and it's an incredible prompt, my favorite story i've had so far), the AI kept trying to set up a "Newt" situation ala Aliens even though there were literally no other living beings in the prompt. Right-click, delete the lil scamp and erase her from the story.

This has the added bonus of keeping your game a little more focused. Ultimately, it's your decision whether the situation calls for it or not. I personally recommend continually curating the story on the fly for the sake of a cohesive narrative and to reduce the amount of extra sh** my system has to endure.

This one's admittedly still a work in progress as you have less control over the map as you do other elements of the story, but that's not to say you don't have ANY control. As I understand it, the game generates locations via two ways: either by exploring the map or by adding locations as a result of a skill check/story beat. Over time the map will start tanking my game as it will inevitably spiderweb to massive heights. Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about this angle. Sooner or later you're going to have to expand the map (especially since crafting is ties to the level of the area you're in) so best practice would be to try and fight the urge to explore too much horizontally and try to keep it as vertical as possible (build tall, not wide). Again, this is an eventuality and there's not too much to be done.

What you can do, however, is turn down new locations offered via event/quick time/story beat UNLESS it's part of your quest chain. It's not much, but it is one less location to generate. If you need to, edit the story and delete the discovery so the game doesn't try to drag it back up later. I.e. the game tried to do the Newt thing three times on my Red Dwarf playthrough. Wrong franchise, dude. It DID try to offer me a chihuahua as a pet, but this was also outside the scope of the story I was trying to experience so I deleted him as well. It will do this with locations as well. During my RoboFlop playthrough I had multiple quests surrounding a corrupt politician named Richard Barnes. This resulted in Mr. Barnes owning seven different offices throughout the city (all helpfully named "Richard Barnes' Office) and while that sounds plausible, the five clones of Richard Barnes scattered throughout the different offices was not. By the third quest in the chain I had killed two Richards and a third was incarcerated. I recommend staying on top of your Quests so you don't accidentally delete the location you need to go to.

Curating your quest log is just as important. There's no penalty for deleting a quest so go ahead and trim that sh** up.

Now this one hurts because for all it's flaws I actually almost enjoy the crafting in this game. This doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of my hangs/freezes/crashes occur when I try to engage with the crafting mechanic in any way, be it tracking recipes or just adding ingredients. I would go so far as to say that around 70% of my crashes have occurred in the crafting menu and other than avoiding it (not likely) I don't really have a solution here. I think it might have something to do with generating recipe lists but I haven't really looked too far into this one yet. I'll update this if I ever find out anything pertinent but for now, if you're on a low-end system, craft carefully.

This is a collection of things I've tried that have proven to work better than not doing them at all.

About open-ended mode: this is the way. Every time I've had way too much difficulty locating items/weapons/food for my character, open-ended mode has saved my butt.

• Being in the right place helps. Looking for a gun in a library probably won't work out, even in open-ended mode. However, the chances are obviously higher if the location or thing text describes or involves an area where a gun might be located. "you begin searching the ruined police car for a weapon" will likely yield a more positive result than "you search for a weapon nearby".
  
• If the text describes a visible item/weapon, you'll have a much higher chance of success if you specify that you are putting the item in your inventory. Something seemingly direct, e.g. "You take the Cyber Gloves" might result in your character simply putting them on in the story without manifesting it as an item, resulting in a hit-or-miss dynamic of whether the game will remember if you have said item or not and robbing you of the chance to possibly gain an ability. Instead, "You take the Cyber Gloves and put them in your inventory." has a MUCH higher chance of actually manifesting the item into existence. This applies to any in-game item, so if you're hungry find yourself a kitchen and OPEN THAT END.
  
• To that same end, NPC's can be lifesavers. Even with no changes to their opinion of you simply asking them for help will provide you with a decent chance to get what you need. Bonus points if you mention a specific task or need you're trying to fulfill. (E.g. 'You ask the scavenger "Hey man, got anything to eat? I'm starving." ' or "You ask the hacker 'Got any spare RAM lying around that I could use?' ").
  
• BUILD THINGS SPARINGLY. I don't know if this should have gone in the crafting/map section bu it's difficult to find the balance between exploring the map until you find a crafting Thing or choosing to build one yourself. There are specific use cases where I'd advise building a Thing as opposed to searching for one. (e.g. During my Red Dwarf runs, I often found myself starving because the game wasn't really spawning anything food related outside of come consumables. This led me to building a Food Replicator in one of the hub areas I spent a lot of time in. Lifesaver.)

That's about it. Hopefully some of these tips help out. Feel free to provide any input or things you've learned, I'm expecting to add to this as I figure some more things out. Now go have you an adventure or something.