Ships are unselectable

[astrosteve]

I'm having an odd problem. I'm new to the game, and since this isn't being reported all over the web, I'm going to assume it's something I'm doing. I find that, quite often, ships can't be selected. Left clicking on them does nothing. If I move the mouse over them, I still get the normal text in the bottom left hand corner. I can still left click and hold to draw a box, but box select doesn't work either.

Keep in mind this isn't all the time, just sometimes. And it's an all or nothing situation. Either all the ships can be selected or none of them can. It's happened on games I've restored from a save file, it has happened on brand new games I just started. I can't find any sort of pattern here. Other commands work. for instance, I can hit P to pause. (And then curse at the game a bit.)

Does anyone have any idea what is causing this? I did a bit of Googling and haven't been able to find anyone else at all complaining of this problem. Therefore, I'm assuming it's something specific to me. I really want to like the game because it seems awesome, but this issue is getting extremely frustrating.

Thanks for any help.

Edited to add: If it makes a difference, I'm playing on the Steam version with all the expansions installed.

[Hearteater]

Is it only some ships?  Specifically the non-combat ships?  Because box-selecting a mixed group of combat and non-combat will only get the combat ships.  But if only non-combat ships are in the box, then it selects them.  There is a key (shift, can't recall) you can hold down to select both when  you box.

As for single target selecting, nothing's coming to mind that would prevent that.  Although you can't ever select enemy ships.

[x4000]

If you are alt-tabbing out, or shift-tabbing into the steam interface, that's probably it. It's a known bug in the unity engine, and it makes the alt or shift key get stuck down after you resume play. We show the text of keys that have been held down suspiciously long next to the cursor -- so if you see it saying Alt next to the mouse cursor, just tap alt again and everything should go back to normal.

Hope that helps!

[astrosteve]

If you are alt-tabbing out, or shift-tabbing into the steam interface, that's probably it. It's a known bug in the unity engine, and it makes the alt or shift key get stuck down after you resume play.

That is probably it. I tend to alt-tab out a lot, so I'll see try to stop doing that. Thanks!

[x4000]

My pleasure!  And you don't have to stop alt-tabbing at all -- but when you come back in and see that it says "alt" right next to your cursor, just tap alt once more and you're done.  No big thing in the end if you know what it is, but we sure hope that bug gets fixed in an upcoming version of the unity engine!