Maybe I'm Dumb, are these Bugs or Working as Intended?

[osunightfall]

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.

[x4000]

Welcome to the forums!

One thing to note is that the federation doesn't just automatically form when conditions are met -- that would actually be to your disadvantage in terms of being able to control the situation.  You have to go into the political screens for the races in question and actually execute the federation actions.  In order to do that, you tend to need a certain amount of influence (it varies) with the race you are actually working with directly (your influence with the other races involved in your transaction doesn't matter, it's a matter of their relationship to the race you are doing the dealing with, which is something very useful when strategizing -- the Peltians can dislike you as long as the Skylaxians like you, or vice-versa).

Where exactly the federation options are depends on the race, in terms of the political categories.  It's typically either under an explicit Federation category, or else under General Agenda or International Relations if there is not a federation category.  There aren't many categories, so it tends to be straightforward to find.  It sounds like you were waiting for it to happen automatically, though, so most likely that was the point of confusion.

[osunightfall]

I apologize if I wasn't clear. I totally tried to use the options on the political screens many times. The options were just never valid no matter what I tried. In the case of the Skylaxians, it could be my fault, maybe the 300 favor toward another race condition was still there and I just missed it. As for the Peltians, I'm simply saying that if the "Create a Federation for Protection" is impossible because the Andors are dead, it would be nice to see that. It was a little confusing because the expalanation said "The federation will consist of: Skylaxians, Peltians" which is what I wanted. But if the conditions of the federation are impossible to fulfill because the Andors are dead it would be nice to state that directly, rather than the default "These guys all need x favor with each other", since that's kind of contradicted by the "the federation will consist of" message.

I also wanted to say, this seems like a pretty cool game you have here. I'm sure there are still some issues floating around, but I've seen a lot to like so far. I thought it was especially cool how the Thoraxians ended up in my game. They started on their homeworld with billions of population and had begun to spread throughout the galaxy, but their conditions on their home planet became so poor that they eventually died off on that planet, and the rest of their conquests were retaken without *too* much trouble. Neat stuff.

[x4000]

Ah, okay -- I understand better now.  If you have a savegame from when the problem was happening to you, then that's something we can look at and advise on.  With what you're saying, I'm not really sure what the issue was, to be honest.  I'd have to see what messages and options it was giving you, and the exact game state, etc.  It's possible that there's a bug there, or else it may just be the interface not telling you things as clearly as it should (which also would need to be improved).  Right now I can't really judge which it was without being able to poke it myself.

Glad you've been enjoying the game despite that hiccup -- thanks for the kind words!