In Melee, I can play just fine, and I see the two ships fighting as normal. However, in the regular game, ANYTIME I encounter ANY ship and try to fight it, what happens is this:
1. See the ship selection screen. Choose any ship, doesn't matter 2. The ship selection screen remains, screen behind it doesn't change at all, don't see any ships on screen or any planets/asteroids/etc 3. Can see though on the right side the status of both ships, i.e. crew/energy 4. If I just sit and hold down the shift key to fire, I always win (so far) but I think that's cause I have some bad ass weapons on my ship. 5. When I win, things are back to normal and it shows the stats for me beating the enemy ships and then I continue on my merry way
That's the only weird thing I've seen. Anyone else had this or know how to prevent it? Like I said, melee mode works just fine.
I'm not sure, but it sounds like you might be using cyborg mode. This is where the compuer fights for both sides and simply shows you the results. Now, I could be wrong (having never used cyborg mode) but this is the only thing Ican come up with that would prevent you from seeing combat, but show you the outcome.
To turn cyborg mode on/off, go to the game menu and select "Games->Settings->Combat" Make sure it's set to Human.