Diplomacy

Foreign Relations Screen

Diplomacy is the action of negotiation with different groups. In Aurora those other groups would be Aliens or other nations. Diplomacy is conducted by diplomatic teams, and the diplomatic options available to diplomats depends on the relations, including Military corporation, Trade access, and Sharing research, Geo/Gav Survey information. The diplomacy screen is access from the Empire menu Ctrl+F5

Overview

Diplomacy in Aurora operates using a bilateral system, where each Empire has an opinion of every other alien races that they know of and two Empires may have different opinions of each other. Each Opinion of each Empire toward another is expressed by the Political Modifier. This is a number which will change over time based on different events and situations. It will also affect the treaties that can be set up, either automatically by NPRs or manually by players. Empires will determine by themselves what treaties to grant to other Empires and each is handled on a unilateral basis. Thus Empire A can grant Trade Access (for example) to Empire B without that being reciprocated.

You can set your Empire's diplomatic stance toward Empires on the Foreign Relations screen Ctrl+F5, but their view of you can only be determined by the diplomatic actions that they take. Their underlying opinion is not revealed. In addition, communication attempts take place for each race involved and a situation could result where Empire A can understand the language of Empire B but not vice versa. Sort of like when you go to Paris and the waiters can speak English but refuse to do so if you don't speak French. This has important implications for interrogating prisoners and for espionage.

First Contact

Once you get an active sensor ping on one of the race ships, or see their planetary population. They will show up in your diplomacy screen. Now, you can initiate communication and a diplomatic team can affect the relationship once comms are established. Initiating communication will get you a small bonus to your Political Modifier for knowing their language, and you'll learn the empire's actual name instead of the generic one your intel officers gave them. You don't need a diplomacy team for that, but it can take awhile.

Note that until you are listed as friendly the NPR will quickly lose DR(start disliking you) for any ships of yours they see inside one of their own populated systems. This is based on the actual Tonnage of ships in their system, so the smaller the first contact vessel is the better. Thus the best way to handle first contact is to either make contact outside their home (or any populated) system or make contact and leave quickly. Look at it from their side. If an alien ship is hanging around in their home system, they are going to get nervous about it. If they encounter you away from their home system, they are going to be far less unhappy.

It is entirely possible that you saw the empire, but they didn't see you. If you want peace you want them to know you exist as soon as you can, or all your diplomatic actions are only one sided. You may have them as friendly but they just recently noticed you exist so they could end up considering you hostile. Turning on a transponder is good for that. All ships in the system will see the ship and identify the race associated with it (you).

Once they know you exist they will assign a diplomacy team to you, which works the same way as yours does boosting their opinion of you. The skill of the other race's diplomacy team will also increase your diplomatic rating of them, and you should slowly gain ground towards peaceful coexistence.

Treaties

Treaties are one-way only so if an NPR grants you trade access you have access to the NPR populations but they will only have access to yours if you grant them trade access. The same applies to geo treaties, grav treaties, etc.. NPRs will automatically grant the various treaties when the political modifier reaches the appropriate level. Player races have the option of granting the treaty status for NPRs. While it might appear at first to be a good idea to let NPRs grant you access and not return the favour, there are several advantages to granting various treaties,

Hostile/Neutral/Friendly/Allied Military Status

If an alien race set to hostile, any missiles of that race in flight, regardless of target, will be automatically engaged by anti missile defence. Your Race will allow Friendly and Allied Races to use your Jump Tenders. Ships of allied races will encrypted transponders so you will be able to you will be able to see their ships on the System Map. Your ships will defend allied ships with with Point blank missile systems. Contacts of each alien race will be shown in an appropriate colour based on their military status.

Trade Access

If you grant trade access, NPRs will move trade goods within your Empire, between your Empire and the NPR populations and between your Empire and others with whom the NPR has a treaty. This can include moving infrastructure to your colonies that is produced by alien populations. You will gain export taxes for goods moved from your populations and you may get some free infrastructure.

Notes

• It is impossible to become completely friendly with Star Swarm or Precursors. Even if you somehow manage to get them up to the higher DRs they will always consider alien ships as hostile.