Click something in Overview, then it gets shown in the “Selected Item” window. Then press A (Align to) and your spaceship will align.
What doesn’t work:
Click something in Overview, then it gets shown in the “Selected Item” window. Then press something else, for example your Cloaking module, or your MWD, and then try pressing A (Align to), and then your spaceship doesn’t align but you get the screen message “ALIGN TO click target”, while I still clearly have the item visible in the “Selected Item” window.
It is obviously really annoying that every time you click somewhere else than the Overview you basically lose your item selection. Please fix this bug.
This problem exists for:
Align
Approach
Jump
Keep distance
…
I use my hotkeys differently. A significantly more consistent method is the press and hold method (i.e. press and hold A, then click on the thing that you want to align to).
Another option that might work for you is to use your hotkeys to activate your mods. However, I still recommend using the first method due to it’s reliability (for example, you can still run into issues like your chat windows capturing your keyboard presses if they have focus).
Finally, I’m not entirely sure that this is a bug. But who knows.
You’re right, There are workarounds, but they all involve an extra mouseclick.
It would be much more practical if EVE would remember your selection if you click somewhere else.
After all, the “Selected item window” still shows the same item, but you can’t interact with it anymore with the shortcuts.
I rather like it that I can give a warp to target command that does not automatically try to warp me to the object I happened to have targeted a minute ago.
Or that I accidentally start aligning when I intend to type.