Thanks for the reply!
When the black screen problem first showed up, it was under a 1.43 save running under a 1.44 patch. Recently, though, the same thing happened on a fresh save. I was attacking a patrol in Citadel IX when the game screen went black, and had to jump in and out of the battlefields to fix the problem.
As to the other... I have a perfectly standard optical mouse with no strange software installed, ditto for the keyboard.
-F.
