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Do you have a negative bank balance? If you're below -500, you can't spend until your balance goes above -500.

When you get near -500, adjust your spending sliders (economy screen) so that your income equals your expenses. It's OK to run a deficit down to -500 at the start of the game; you just have to stop at -500.

The red User interface means you are EVIL. You probably decimated worms to get a boost to planet quality, or sacrificed lives to get more production, or whatever else you did. To come back to neutral user interface is a matter of choosing good events (like paying 1000bc to avoid too many deaths from asteroid rains), but it will do you little good if you are already in the red. Stay evil, it won't hurt you (though you'll get to be at war with the goody civs rapidly).
As for not being able to use resources, this is because you are below -500BC. You can't run a deficit forever. You must wait for your money to get above -500, then adjust tax rates and spendings to get 0+ BC/turn.

Not to sound silly, but the red is kind of annoying on the eyes. I like the white overlay that comes from being good.

Lame, but it works for me. :notsure:

LOL

Great name for an empire, wik!

I agree I find it ugly too. I actually prefer the neutral UI, and I am always confused as to what icon is what after the icons changed. Imagine if you has 9 alignments (lawful/chaotic + good/evil), you'd get 9 sets of icons to remember. Totally impossible for any human.
Changing the overall color and the robot advisor is cool, but I don't like the change in the icons.

I'd agree... have you experimented with trying to find the files with the UI and switching them around?

All you really have to remember, though, is one set of 6 icon positions: StarMap/Planets/Ships/Economy/Diplomacy/Tech. They never move around.

Yes but remembering positions would be easier with a figure inside than changing icons. 6 is too big a number for my working memory. 5 is the high limit to find somethign at first glance (though some people can get as much as 9, a limit of 3 to 5 choices is considered better ergonomics). It's particularly hard since I mostly use 3 of these icons and almost never the remaining 3 ones. I can't care less about the list of ships 99% of the time for example, whereas I spend a lot of time looking at the influence values in a given sector, which is in a totally different place of the UI, close to the waypoint button that I never use and always click upon by mistake because I used to click on the button to the left in the upper right corner, which happens to now be the second left beutton in the upper right corner...
I always thought UI design was a nightmare anyway.

by the way, the good graphics don't line up on my system -- the mini-map control box hangs down over the fleet window

-- p4, winxp,all-in-wonder radeon 7500, directx 9.0b