Neptune’s pride has a ton of diplomacy. Things may be going perfectly when suddenly the entire game collapses on you. What happened? The answer to that question is likely in a message that you will never see. My idea is that all messages will go public after a game ends. Not only would it be fun to read the messages of your enemies, it would also help you learn what to do next time.
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I think this is a terrible idea but maybe that’s just because I tend to blow a fuse when things go wrong and I don’t want to have that in permanent writing 
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Agree with LDG, messages are not meant to be public. If you want to know where you went wrong, wait until the game wraps up, then start a new thread to everyone and ask.
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Also backstabbing and manipulation, while not my cup of tea, are a valid part of the game and that should really be kept private.
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Messages should definitely be kept private. However, the various players are free to copy and paste incriminating evidence, or even to manufacture said evidence, to their hearts’ content 
For those so inclined postmortem discussions can be enlightening and fun.
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The messages will be private until after everything is done. For those who don’t want to see it, don’t look. There are people who would find the information fun and enlightening to read. I also don’t see why the messages need to remain private after the game is completed. Because the game is done, the information can’t really be used except for a players knowledge. If you are worried about people seeing what you have said behind their back, it doesn’t really matter in this game. Hopefully everyone understands that it is all for fun and that backstabbing is to be expected to an extent.You shouldn’t be saying anything overly offensive anyway, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Finally, the aliases are a great way to ensure you aren’t judged based on previous games. Overall, there aren’t any big reasons for a players messages to remain hidden forever. Asking in a public thing after the game completes is not a substitute. Many players will no longer be watching the game and you won’t see the whole story. Maybe having it as an option in the game setup would be a way for players to enjoy it either way.
Making messages public after the game is an invasion of privacy of the players. Sure, someone can post copies of other player’s messages, but I’ve never seen every message from a player reposted. Usually just something that can help sway others to work for or against someone else.
The real result of such a change would be the immediate moving of messaging off of the game system, and into alternative forms were players would have some expectation of privacy again. The end result would be inconvenience for players, and no new information for you.
I would be fine with event logs becoming public as a setting. That way, after the game you could see who traded with whom, and if there were formal alliances in play.
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@Brian_Flowers said it all: people who does want privacy would still manage to have it. This would be pointless.
I also would be ok with event logs being made public.
OP not everyone plays with aliases, some people try to build up a reputation for being a good ally and such but there are sometimes situations where a difficult decision needs to be made and you shouldn’t need to worry about that becoming public at the end.
Also people who are playing with RL friends or who have become friendly from playing NP may have personal conversations relating to RL that they don’t want a bunch of strangers on the internet to see. They would have to limit the in game chat which reduces the sociability of the game.
There are probably a whole stack of other situations where it would result, as Brian says, in people just using skype or G+ etc for game chat instead.
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At end of game or at AFK or elimination, players are prompted to select “publish” and allow their chat logs public. If all players in a conversation thread agree to publish - then the messages are visible to everyone at end of game.
It will improve quality of communication and trading, for people to sometimes see the potential for fun/persuasive messaging. People will see creative, high quality ambassador status messaging - and be inspired. There can be spread of knowledge to raise the level of the game. Made visible new ideas previously you had not thought of as a new player - that you could trade money for a star, going rates for tech, how much tech is donated, how to manage allies,
Many players may never publish their messages, but it would be SO COOL to see the communication logs that do come out.
I see what everyone is saying about the chat being private. Although I never say anything that I wouldn’t mind others seeing, others do. Although it would be nice as an option, I understand why so many wouldn’t want it. I like what gavinmartintayl posted about having the option to make the conversation public after. If all players in a conversation deem it worthy to make public, there is no reason not to allow others to read it. What do people think of at least having it as an option?
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I think it’s a potentially very complicated change with very little or no benefit to anything related to the game.
Even if it were an option that were off in a current game, the instant this feature exists is the instant I exclusively use something else to communicate.
I play with real life friends most games, and we already use a mix of game messages, text, IM and e-mail to communicate.
I’ve even played with people from the forums and G+ where we used google hangouts to communicate because it’s more instant/convenient.
The entire motivation behind the OP is angled towards reading other people’s messages. Lots of people want to read everybody else’s mail, but I suspect very few people want lots of people to read theirs.
I mean if you could read my messages, and an ally and I totally screwed you, at the end of the game you could publish those messages along with our aliases, user names, and stats and say “don’t trust these specific players!”
I can understand wanting to know what other players said, but being able to is a bad idea that won’t work anyway because we’d all just use something else to communicate.
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I’ve played ~15 games and never used anything but the in game messaging.
Ditto here … at least 95% of my NP communication has been in-game .
Likely this feature will not be implemented - there are other very exciting features that have priority, are much cleaner, and directly effect the game. However, even after reading the well measured reasoning against this idea, I believe it would be really fun to see whichever messages get published and the elective publishing feature addresses all of the arguments against the idea.
Hey @gavinmartintayl and @jkrmnj I just wanted to jump in and let you know I have been reading and appreciate your suggestions.
I agree that being able to read some kind of transcript of the game, some kind of secret log that players could keep would be really fun.
I wonder if it would just be cool to get a bunch of roleplayers together have everybody write a diary each day about what is going on, only to be revealed at the end. That way they can include their thoughts about what is going on and their plans. I think this would be better than just reading player messages.
Jay.
The diary thing sounds great and would definitely be better than reading messages. Are you recommending the diary thing as a feature in the game for the future, or something we do outside of the game?
Just sharing my two cents.
Like some other said, I think its a bad idea. For instance I got along with someone really well in one game so we exchanged real contact info. If it went public, all that info would be shared.
Also I do tend to have OOC conversations with some people or otherwise talk about stuff completely unrelated.
I may be in the minority here, but I like to roleplay when I’m anonymous, it helps me stay in character. If I know the comments will be linked to me in the future I’ll be distracted from properly talking. (as it is with ships flying everywhere it can be hard enough negotiating while remembering who I’m playing!)
On the flip side, someone mentioned an event log of sorts. I think that is a great idea. Its fun trying to figure out whose trading with who… So seeing a log of transactions afterwards could be highly interesting.
It would be pretty cool to have some kind of meta-game like that. Have an optional “captain’s log” or something that you could fill out each turn. It would be made public at the end of the game and everyone could vote for “best narrative” or something for a couple of extra renown.
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