I played through the tutorial this weekend which played fine - no obvious problems.
Then decided to start a new game. I set my scientists to research a few tech's to get engines (because I couldn't see any listed when I went to build a survey cruiser) and figured I had to research them. I remember picking Nuclear engines something and then going off to do other things. While some time passed, the scientist who was researching died and when I went to the screen and selected his project it gave me some Null Object error or something like that (sorry, next time I'll document it). I was able to cancel the project and when I did I noticed some weird research projects showed up for engines with only 1 RP to research it. I figured this must be part of the game having to research this to get engines showing up in the design screen so I researched one of them but no engines showed up and the other 2 RP research project mysteriously vanished along with all engine tech's.
At this point I decided to start a new game thinking I screwed something up but in the new game I still have no engines I can mount on my ships and now I'm missing the nuclear engine tech's and Ion engine tech's so I don't even know what to research to get them.
Now I'm thinking my game is bugged and I need to reinstall but it's also very possible I just don't have a clue what I'm doing.