Game Crashes when starting a new game

[Silverthorn]

Downloaded game from steam and everything worked well. Played tutorial and then started a game as human. After playing a few hours to learn how things work, I wanted to start a new game. Launch application. Click new game. Chose galaxy type. Choose race. Click start and end up back at original screen with the option to start new game/play tutorial/forums ETC. I can still reload the first game and it plays fine. I can no longer play the tutorial since that button dumps me back to the start screen. I tried re-installing the game from steam with no change. I tried deleting the save game files which removes the load game option but does not change my ability to start a new game. There is no error message being reported. Rebooting the computer changed nothing. It does not matter if I launch game from desktop icon or .exe file. It does not matter what settings I choose for the new game. I always end up back at the start screen. I am at a loss as to what to do next. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Silverthorn]

Additional Information: After posting I went back through all the game files and found a "fatal error" file time stamped at the last time I tried to start a game. Opening this file revealed "unable to open design folder.' The only thing in the design folder are the new battlestation builds just released from the modding community. When I deleted the design folder, I was able to start a new game without any difficulty.

[zakblood]

you may not have all the info needed then it seems, eg not complete

[Ufnv]

Additional Information: After posting I went back through all the game files and found a "fatal error" file time stamped at the last time I tried to start a game. Opening this file revealed "unable to open design folder.' The only thing in the design folder are the new battlestation builds just released from the modding community. When I deleted the design folder, I was able to start a new game without any difficulty.

Permissions issues?