That's a problem with Windows and it's asinine 2GB RAM limit rather than Sins... Run Sins through WINE and notice that suddenly you will experience little or no random crashes. That being said, Maelstrom isn't the worst offender in this category that I've seen, though it certainly isn't the best either. Can't say I've experienced the joy of this feature with Maelstrom personally.
No, that's a Developer problem.
The fact that no Mod I've played actually tries to assume that their Playerbase won't run it through WINE and instead, launch it normally through the game is easily the worst thing any Mod can do. It really is, because not all Fans want to commit two hours to just installing the mod simply because they don't have the proper reading comprehension to understand complicated installs.
And really, this isn't hard for the Dev.. If someone who is modding just takes the time to look at whats going on in Sins, you can easily reduce the amount of memory the game takes up in Vanilla alone.