I only played E5 part of the way through, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen to me. Do you recall when it first started happening? Can you go back to a saved pilot? You can PM Tim if you are really stuck, he's around occasionally since he's working on a new plugin. Sorry I'm not much help. Good luck.
Does this happen in every system, or just one specific system? You could open ResEdit and change the MinCoolness for that specific Govt.
I remember a bug in one of the earlier Empire games, where I failed one specific mission and the alloted completion time lessened each time I tried it, so there was no way to complete the game without changing the completion time through ResEdit.
This post has been edited by Callide : 05 March 2008 - 01:22 PM