I'm playing my first game and really enjoying it. Thanks for the hard work!
During my first game, I followed the tutorial and brought space faring to the Peltians, Andors, and Skylaxians. (Side note: deliver the spacefaring tech missions are super hard/frustrating early on because of the huge amount of little ships, but become super easy once you get the afterburner.) I'm working to get the Peltians - Andor relationship and the Peltians - Skylaxians relationship both to 90, so I can start the federation. So far, I've only found 3 ways to improve the inter-species reputation.
Ways to improve inter-species reputation:
1. Trading - This seems to work really well. I've only had the Peltians and Andorians trading for a short time and already they have over 60 reputation with each other. My main problem is that the Peltians only have one moon that the Skylaxxians don't need. In fact, the Skylaxxians don't need anything from the Andors either. There's no option for trading with either race.
2. Gifting tech from species to species- This only improves relations by 2 points per tech given. So I would need to get the Peltians to give the Skylaxxians 45(!) techs in order to get them to 90.
3. Dispatch missions- The improve relations with another race missions only improve reputation by 0.2 per month. So it would take 450 months or 37 years of doing nothing but this dispatch to get up to 90.
So here's my question: are there other ways to improve inter-species reputation that I have not discovered yet? Does a lack of moons severely limit the negotiation abilities of a race? Should I just be flexible to the randomness of my map and realize that Peltians and Skylaxxians will never like each other enough to from a federation?
In fact, if trade options are so critical, is having a race colonize extra moons dangerous? If the Skylaxxians only colonized one moon, maybe they would still need the Peltians' stuff and my problems would be gone. It's interesting that trade could be so critical that the player should support a "don't ask, don't tell" policy to extra moons if he's happy with his current trade situation.