My trade partner suddenly "declared" war

[stonestriker (OP)]

I have had contact with the Hermod Star Empire for some 20 years, and had built up a diplomatic rating of 2200 points, along with mutual trade access and geologic survey data.

I did not explore much, so the next race I "discovered" was when Sol Aliens arrived with Geo survey ships in my home system.  I destroyed those I could find, and fortified the jump points.  Over the last few years, I have destroyed small incursions of 1 or 2 ships at a time of the Sol Aliens (still maintaining a diplomatic rating of 120 points, not much support for this war apparently 

Then suddenly I get a message that the Hermod Star Empire has cancelled Trade access and survey data access, and they start moving into my home system in force, destroying civilian ships on the way.

Why did the Hermod Star Empire suddenly get so pissed? Is it possible they are allied with the Sol Aliens, and are honouring their alliance? I have not entered any of their systems, so I can not guess what I can have done that could bring us to war besides this.  If they are in an alliance with the Sol Aliens, are there any way to see this (preferably without using SM)?

[Theodidactus]

The blessing and curse of Aurora is that it's devilishly hard to understand the AI.

The obvious downside is that the AI makes irrational or just obviously wrong decisions on occasion, and that you feel a bit isolated from any "friends" you might find out there among the stars, since you can have a decades-long alliance and still not be sure where their homeworld is.

The upside is that without little quirks like this, the game would actually be monotonous in the extreme...and I also like the fact that it makes the aliens seem more "Alien"


It LOOKS like you've pissed off an intergalactic alliance. There's no way to know for sure even with SM mode (I think).

To be fair, you seemed to have brought this fire down upon yourself by blowing up perfectly harmless survey craft that were piloted by beings that did not understand how things like borders and territory work...however, you're in a boat that includes pretty much all other players because I'm pretty sure 90% of wars start that way.

[stonestriker (OP)]

Oh, I am absolutely happy that the AI is capable of backstabbing me like this And it could very well be a case of aggressive negotiation from the Hermod, to inform me that shooting unarmed ships is wrong.

I just wanted to know whether NPR actually formed alliances with each other, and if the player was able to see this information anywhere.

[Theodidactus]

Oh, I am absolutely happy that the AI is capable of backstabbing me like this And it could very well be a case of aggressive negotiation from the Hermod, to inform me that shooting unarmed ships is wrong.

I just wanted to know whether NPR actually formed alliances with each other, and if the player was able to see this information anywhere.

\
I think you need to actually hack into the database to know for sure, if they are both NPRs

[sloanjh]

Um, I have no recollection of Steve putting in anything about alliances

[Pause while searching for Diplomacy thread]

Ok - here's the diplomacy rules from 4 years back - I don't think there have been major changes in the statuses.  (I found it by advanced searching for "trade" and "points" in all threads from "Steve Walmsley".  I could have further restricted the search to only look in "Mechanics", since that's where he tends to post new rules.)  http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1613.0.html

If you read the whole thread, you'll see Steve eventually lists the possible statuses (and the diplo points needed for each one):

+++++++++++++++++++++
Neutral Military Status: -100
Friendly Military Status (Jump ships can escort the alien Empire's ships): 800
Allied Military Status: (Ships will defend the ally's ships against missile attack): 4000

Trade Access: 200
Share Geological Survey Data: 800
Share Gravitational Survey Data: 2400
Share Research Data: 6000
+++++++++++++++++++++

There are two important things to understand here:
1)  Diplomacy points are NOT symmetric.  The diplo rating that you see of 2200 points is your people's attitude towards them, NOT their attitude towards you.  So you could be loving them (+2200), while they hate your guts (-500).  In which case they would go to war with you and your attitude towards them would begin to drop as they did naughty things like dropping asteroids on Buenos Aires.
2)  The best military status is "Allied".  That says that they'll cover you in their anti-missile umbrella, but it doesn't say anything about changing attitudes towards someone who attacks an ally.  I just re-checked the original post, and I don't see a negative modifier to damage done to allies - only for damage done to your ships/pdcs.  It makes sense for Steve to put something like that in (maybe with e.g. a 50% discount) but I don't remember seeing an announcement about such a change.  In addition, I'm not sure how likely it is that the two NPR would have gotten such friendly relations with each other.

So, barring corrections from Steve about how alliances behave, I think it's more likely that you've had warships sitting in a system where they had a colony, and that they had those warships on active sensors.  This would cause their attitude towards you to drop, without affecting yours towards them.  Eventually they would get so pissed off that they start attacking you.

John

[sloanjh]

\
I think you need to actually hack into the database to know for sure, if they are both NPRs

Two things:

1)  A nit-pick:  There are two types of NPR in Aurora; computer-controlled and player-controlled.  The original Aurora didn't have an AI; all NPRs were player-controlled.  Nowadays, most people have the setting configured so that new NPR that they encounter are computer controlled.  Player-controlled NPR are visible as races on the ctrl-F2 screen; computer-controlled ones are not.

2)  I think you meant to suggest "Ask Steve for the designer password"   What designer mode does is to make computer-controlled (NPR) races show up on the ctrl-F2 screen so that they can be made default and examined.  While it is still possible to corrupt a game in designer mode (such corruptions are why Steve likes to control access to the passwords - he doesn't want a lot of weird bug reports) by making changes to the race that the AI won't know how to deal with, it is much less likely to corrupt in designer mode than while mucking around in the DB.  It's also lot easier to find the information in designer mode  

That being said, neither one will tell you what's going on directly - all you'll find out is the other races opinion of you, and their opinions of each other.  You would have to do experiments to see how those opinions change by e.g. blowing up a ship of the 3rd race.

John

[stonestriker (OP)]

Thanks for the answers both of you, however the situation seems to be even stranger now.

I only had warships in the Sol system for entire game, where no alien race should be able to establish colonies without me knowing it (had level 60 or 70 DSTS).  I ventured briefly to two other systems with appr.  80. 000 tons of assorted warships with active sensors, but they only passed through the systems before heading home again.  And these systems had neither ships or colonies in them from any other race (hence why I turned back) and my ships were carrying EM20-220 sensors which should? have picked up most colonies.

IF my allies were present in these systems, should I not have seen a gradual decline of relations, instead of having them cancel both Trade Access and Share Geological Survey Data at the same time, hinting at Diplomatic Rating decline of at least 600 points in 5 days? Or are the penalties for warships in colonized systems that dramatic?

[Theodidactus]

Two things:

1)  A nit-pick:  There are two types of NPR in Aurora; computer-controlled and player-controlled.  The original Aurora didn't have an AI; all NPRs were player-controlled.  Nowadays, most people have the setting configured so that new NPR that they encounter are computer controlled.  Player-controlled NPR are visible as races on the ctrl-F2 screen; computer-controlled ones are not.

Yeah that's what I meant

2)  I think you meant to suggest "Ask Steve for the designer password"  What designer mode does is to make computer-controlled (NPR) races show up on the ctrl-F2 screen so that they can be made default and examined.  While it is still possible to corrupt a game in designer mode (such corruptions are why Steve likes to control access to the passwords - he doesn't want a lot of weird bug reports) by making changes to the race that the AI won't know how to deal with, it is much less likely to corrupt in designer mode than while mucking around in the DB.  It's also lot easier to find the information in designer mode  

It's very important that I feel L33t, and hacking databases in this manner is how I do that.

IF my allies were present in these systems, should I not have seen a gradual decline of relations, instead of having them cancel both Trade Access and Share Geological Survey Data at the same time, hinting at Diplomatic Rating decline of at least 600 points in 5 days? Or are the penalties for warships in colonized systems that dramatic?

Yeah see I thought that if you were allied with the betazoids and the klingons attacked you, the betazoid-to-klingon rating would drop. No?

[sloanjh]

Yeah see I thought that if you were allied with the betazoids and the klingons attacked you, the betazoid-to-klingon rating would drop. No?

That's not what that thread seems to say.  As to what's actually coded up - only Steve knows (and possibly not even him )

John