So, this Last Federation sounds like a cool idea, thought I. I'll just buy it then and see what this is all about.
And I did. Things were going well. I was trying to build a peaceful and benevolent federation based on trust and understanding.
So about fifty years into the game I found I was *still* unable to actually form a federation. My targets were the Peltians and the Skylaxians. The Andors had been crushed long ago by other races.
One of the Peltian conditions for creating a federation was based on protection, they had to like the Peltians and the Andors. But...the Andors were dead, long long dead. I'm assuming I could no longer fill the conditions to get them to join, because the Andors were dead. They loved the Skylaxians and the Skylaxians loved them, but the option was never available. The reason that I don't know if this is a bug is that the red "You can't do this" text isn't very specific. Wouldn't it make sense that with the Andors dead they would want a protection pact even more? Was this the reason I couldn't get them to join?
So with that avenue seemingly closed, I tried to work on things from the Skylaxian end. They had 99% of the senate in favor of a Federation, it cost like no credit to get them to do it, but no options were ever available. I remember early on the game told me that they needed 300 favor toward another race to form a federation with them, but unless I'm mistaken that text eventually stopped showing up. Nonetheless, despite having 200+ favor toward the Peltians they just would not form up. If this text is static I apologize, but I really think it wasn't in the list of conditions after a certain point. So I couldn't get them to form a federation either.
Of course, this all became rather moot when the Peltians and Skylaxians, whom I'd raised up to be mightier and more potent than all other races combined decided to form the Solar Alliance and then they killed me, despite my essentially being a deity figure to both races...
Long story short, is this working as intended? If so, can we get some more descriptive "why this won't work" text for these situations? Forming a Federation is kind of the most important thing in the game and it's a little frustrating to not know with certainty which conditions are failing.