Diplomacy and Pacts with players?

First off go to the diplomacy research tab, you'll need to research your envoy cruiser.

Next get your relationship high enough for a cease fire with another empire.

Now send out at least 1 envoy to one of that players worlds.

Once that players and your relationship hit a specific number a pact will be available if you have researched it.

Each envoy provides a maximum of 2.00 relationship boost.

You may need to research public forgiveness to lose your race / faction negative bonus if you aren't already on a team with teams "locked".

The lowest level pact requires at least a relationship of 10 (I.e. enough for a peace treaty) from both players. When you go to the "Offer Player Pact" screen it should say the required relationship level on the tool tip.

In order to raise your standing with another faction you can offer them gifts of credits or resources, offer them missions or fullfill them and use envoy cruisers to visit their planets.

If you are playing in free teams you wil need to start with gifts and missions. Both need to be researched first from the diplomacy research tab and can be executed in the diplmacy window of the player you want to pact with. You usually need a positive standing of three to five to request a cease fire if I recall correctly

After getting the ceasefire with the other player send four envoys (if bott of you are TEC ar Advent)/five envoys (if either of you is Vasari), each to one of his planets (more than one envoy per planet is useless). Depending on what faction you play you should take a look at the abilites an envoy has and place them accordingly on your allies planet (an envoy that speeds up population growth should be positioned on a high population world, one that prevents bombing damage on frontline or vulnerable ones).

Once you have a full alliance (relationship needed is ten I think) you can share pacts, but every pact needs more relationship than the previous one. Last pacts take 18 (Advent, TEC)/20 (Vasari) standing, thus the number of envoys needed. NOTE: Both sides need that much standing in order to offer a pact. If you have a standing of 18 but your ally only has 15 you can only offer pacts up to his standing level and vice versa.

wow, thanks guys. This just opened up an entire new aspect of the game for me.  

Also, there's a bug in the game right now where constantly giving resources even if you have none bumps up their relations with you so if you need a quick boost you can sell off say Crystal and then spam that button for almost free.