But I would imagine it would be much the same as detecting active sensor strength/sensitivity you currently have to do in the game, so same mechanic. Given enough time you will identify them all and find them. If you get closer your chances just increase.
To be honest it should not be that more micro intensive than the current model. You would not require to get closer, you just would increase the chances to detect something earlier if you do.
Yes, but everyone would have to close on every contact to ensure there were not more ships to be discovered before committing to action. Its the same principle. A lot more scouting needed, which is fun at first but gets a lot more tedious over time.
But they would not have to close, just follow the contacts and everything will be detected eventually. Would it not be practically the same as detecting sensor sensitivity/range is now?
Sure you will not know exactly when everything is detected, but that would be the point though... uncertainty.
Personally, I would be sending in a stealthy or fast scout to check any hostile contact as closely as possible before committing any force to battle, just in case I get surprised, or more likely build recon drones and fire them in sequence so I could ensure I minimized my chance of missing something. I would do that for every new contact and if required I would design a class specifically for that role. I would end up with the same information I have now and with no increased danger of surprise to my main force, but I would have to micromanage the scouts/drones.
For a change in sensors to work, it has to add meaningful decisions for the player. It can't just be extra work to get the same information as before.
In general I do agree with that statement, any new feature need to be meaningful and lead to meaningful decisions. What you describe is pretty much how things go in my multi species campaign anyway as there fleets tend to be allot more decentralised for fear of loosing in the sensor war. In a more "competitive" environment the fact that it is so easy to find everything in one spot actually have the effect you need to split the forces so they are not all detected at once from a single small scout who manages to slip through the net.
Against the AI it of course is not really much of an issue I grant you that. So, in essence micromanagement of fleets are already necessary to some degree in some settings. The AI will pretty much never ever find my main force due to me micromanaging scouting already. Most of it can be managed through the escort system though.
The game might also benefit from some order where a ship or fleet would scout randomly around a specific point. Maybe an order where said task-group/ship would patrol randomly from a specific point and a range from that point. It would make scouting much easier in general.
When we are talking about sensors... one thing I really think we need is for ships to be able to activate sensors separately from each other. It is way too common I want to have different types of sensors on ships and don't want to activate the high resolution ones just the low resolution ones. Currently I have nearly entirely ditched all high resolution sensors to parasites for these reasons.