The best way to handle it 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.
From my reading of the initial post, if I'm trying to open communications in their home system and leave my active sensors off they won't get nervous (accumulate negative points) - is that correct? Or will they telepathically know that I've got active sensors on my ship which just happen to be turned off (the wording in the post was a little bit ambiguous)? Or will any non-commercial design upset them (which seems to be what you're saying here)? As I said, the impression I have is that any ship (even if it's a DeathStar
) will not penalize relations as long as its active sensors are turned off.
Another thing I'm not clear on: up until about 15 minutes ago, I knew that the aliens existed but they didn't know I did (I'd picked their homeworld up on passives). I'm confused about what the conditions are for initiating contact, whether they've formed an attitude for me yet, and what level of communications a diplomatic team needs in order to be able to affect the relationship....
1) It seems like I should need to "break EMCON" in order to open communications. It seems like the easiest way to do this (in game mechanics) is to require a ship that's communicating to have its transponder on. At present, it seems like I can jump into a system, detect an alien population, jump back out, and still attempt to initiate communications and have diplomatic relations with them without any ships in systems that they occupy. Do you have thoughts on this? At present it seems like this (at least the "initiate" part) needs to be role played, i.e. turn on the transponder of the embassy ship. That still doesn't address the "accrual" issue - is there an easy way to have Aurora define an "in contact" or "out of contact" state between two empires?
2) I guess the above bullet got most of my questions, but specifically, it feels like I should de-assign my diplomatic team whenever I'm not in contact with an empire, so that the diplomatics don't have an effect on aliens that they aren't talking to. Is this correct?
3) Assuming that they haven't detected me, does it hurt me (i.e. let their attitude towards me get more negative) if I wait to open contact? I assume the answer is no, but wanted to double-check....
4) Before opening communications, I snuck quite a ways into their system. It occurs to me that sneaking around without a transponder could be interpreted as a hostile act. Should there be a penalty if aliens detect you leaving the WP without a transponder?
5) As you say, having unknown ships hanging about one's system might make one a little nervous. Have you thought about an "intercept" mission for NPRs, where they send a ship to a neutral or words contact? Once intercepted, if the contact moves any further towards and alien population it should/could be interpreted as a hostile act.
6) If I immediately grant an alien trade access (+100 attitude per year) and then avoid shooting at them or going into their home system, does that mean that their attitude towards me is guarenteed to drift in the positive direction? It seems like it should, since their Xenophobia should subtract off less than 100 per year and there don't seem to be any other modifiers if you leave them alone.
Thanks,
John