I'm playing a conventional start with a non-conventional NPR already active at game start. Didn't realize how much a leg up it would have because of that but I digress. My issue is that while we have successfully established communications, when I sent a civilian class Diplomatic Ship to a world with one of their pops on it, they told me to leave a few (5day) weeks in a row, then destroyed it. We were at 0 relations and I had them set to neutral.
Am I not going to be able to establish friendly relations with them or should I keep sacrificing ships to explore their space and find a pop they will let me park on?