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.

The initial communication process is automatic. An abstraction of linguistic study based on the empires Translation racial statistic. Once communications are initiated, you 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 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.

Share Geological/Gravitational Survey Data

Granting grav or geo treaties has a couple of benefits. Primarily, it improves your relations, which can lead to the NPR declaring you friendly or allied, or even sharing its research knowledge. Secondly, if you don't want an NPR poking around in your systems, let them have the geo knowledge than they have no reason to send in survey ships.

Share Research Data

The research treaty is an easy way to get new knowledge to the a friendly/allied NPR so it can upgrade its ships and again will improve relations to the point where the NPR can reciprocate - if hasn't already done so.

Mechanics

Political Modifier

The Political Modifier is set initially for each side when first contact takes place. This is set to zero minus a random number between 1 and the Empire's Xenophobia (which is equal to the Xenophobia of the dominant species within that Empire plus any modifier for government type). So although the Political Modifier will start negative on both sides, it could be significantly different for each Empire. The Political Modifier Level required for different treaties is as follows:

• 199 to -100 is Neutral
• 200 is Trade allowed
• 800 is Friendly & Geo-survey info can be traded
• 2400 Gravsurvey sharing allowed
• 4000 Allied Status allowed
• 6000 Research can be shared

The Political Modifier you have for each alien Empire will change over time based on the criteria described below. Unless specifically listed as instant, all modifiers are added or deducted over the course of one year, with small increments being added/deducted during each 5-day increment.

Positive Relation Modifiers

The rating of a diplomatic team assigned to you by the alien Empire will be added over the course of one year. So if the alien team rating was 120 then the political modifier you have for that Empire would increase by 120 every year with small increments being added during each 5-day increment. NPRs will create their own diplomatic teams to influence your perception of their Empire. An NPR's view of you will be influenced by the diplomatic team you assign to that NPR.

• Instant changes ranging from 1 to 10 for positive communication efforts
• Instant 10 for establishing communications
• 100 per year if the alien race has granted trade access
• 100 per year if the alien race is sharing geological survey data:
• 100 per year if the alien race is sharing gravitational survey data:
• 200 per year if the alien race is sharing research information
• 100 per year if the alien race views you as Friendly
• 200 per year if the alien race views you as Allied

Negative Relation Modifiers

The Xenophobia of your Empire will be deducted over the course of one year. So if your Xenophobia was 50 then the political modifier for each alien race would decrease by 50 every year with small increments being deducted during each 5-day increment. If an NPR had a xenophobia of 60 then the political modifier for each known race, including the player race, would decrease by 60 every year -100 per year if communication not established.

• Instant deductions equal to any damage inflicted to your ships or PDCs by the alien race. This is doubled for any internal damage
• Instant deductions equal to 200% of any planetary bombardment damage During the 5-day increment.
• NPRs will deduct points for any alien ships they detect on active sensors in systems in which they have a population. The deduction is equal to 10% of contact size. So a 5000-ton ship (size 100) would cause an instant 10 point deduction. For the purposes of this rule, they will ignore freighters if a trade treaty is in effect and they will ignore ships from Empires they class as Friendly or Allied.

If an Empire is attacked, all treaties with the attacking race will be cancelled and if the political modifier is greater than -150, it is reduced to that amount.

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.