First the crash. This happens usually after a few minutes into the game and may be responsible for a lot of the "5-15 minute" threads.
Have a number of different items, let's say 10, preferably different types and weighing over a pound (I'm not positive about these conditions, I'm hedging my bets).
Open a container (box, corpse, companion, trader) and move the items out of your inventory (or back in if you've already moved them out, seems to not matter either way).
Close the container by clicking the Exit option with your mouse, then immediate look to the left (which is natural if you moved the mouse right to click Exit).
If the game moves smoothly, then it isn't ready to crash. If it stutters it about ready to crash. If it crashes... then it crashed.
This is how about 95% of my sessions end. I forget to not move my mouse after closing a container and I crash to desktop.
Now the second problem, Legionary Assassins are spawning WAY over player level.
When I first triggered them, I was level 5 or 6 and had only ED-E as a companion. Of course I had to try several times before I found any way through them.
Sometimes they had Super Sledges and sometimes they had Thermic Lances. That is HIGH level equipment, not level 5 or 6. In addition, they were almost invincible.
It took spamming a 40mm grenade rifle and having them near a car that explodes to kill them, and my companion was knocked out and I was almost dead.
Now that I got a second companion and I'm level 10, I can survive maybe 50% of the time, when I get lucky.
From reading other peoples posts about them from before, they weren't usually a problem. You just took them out, like being ambushed by raiders or something.
One line the Wiki described their "ridiculously inadequate attempts at ambushes". They are not a laughing matter now. If you see them coming, you and everyone around you are about to die.
You can go up to one and unload a 10mm submachine gun into them for several clips, and you will still die before they do.
Your only hope is to focus fire with your companions and take out one or two before your companions invariably fall and hope you have enough ammo and stimpaks to take the last two out on your own.
It is a protracted battle, and it happens over and over and over. Some people complaining about this talk of starting over, others are talking about quitting.
Either way, when the spawn bug was fixed, another was introduced that made these assassins from keystone cops into four terminators with heavy weaponry.