I don't think there's any way to have them visible to each other before you run the first increment.   Out of curiosity, why do you want that to happen? 

I created a startup DB and tried to figure out from that by playing how things work.  I just wanted to start the different testgames with the same setup and did not want to setup every time anew the diplomacy connections  But a 5sec jump at the beginning surely does not make a difference and all then works like a charm. . .  .

I don't think there's any way to have them visible to each other before you run the first increment.  Out of curiosity, why do you want that to happen? 

Unless you encountered some kind of bug, the only reason your nations wouldn't be able to spot one another is if they don't have tracking stations. Normally when you create a new race, they automatically have one at their homeworld. Now I know you said 'space scanners' but I'm not sure what you meant by that. If it's some kind of base with active sensors, it won't work - you can only detect a colony by passive sensors, which most of the time means tracking stations.

Hi there,

I am a noob in Aurora - got here through the great Let's Plays from Quill and EE - and have already started to try to setup a multi-fraction game.  Yeah, maybe not the easiest way to figure this game out, I know now  .  But it worked (somehow).  However I wasn't able to make the players visible to each other.  They are setup as NonTN and all have space scanners.  But they can't see each other in spite of them being on the same planet.  When I testplay and launch the first spaceships they start recognizing each other - but before that - no way.  Is there a way to activate diplomacy in SpaceMaster mode somehow? When they know each other I can change the settings but I somehow can't make them known to each other in the first place.

So anybody knows how to do that?