So, I have been playing around with thermal sensor mines and missiles. I know that the current coding immediately identifies the race owning the mine that just got tripped, but it would be pretty interesting if passively tripped attacks did not necessarily do so.
Nothing is more annoying that having a race you don't necessarily want to pick a fight with (neutral) sailing hordes of scout and survey ships through your home system. A "plausible deniability" weapon would be handy.
Or in systems with multiple ships present, it would be.... handy... to have an option of sneaking a shot in against another ship. Say, two NPR's sniffing each other out in a system with active sensors and then *poof* missiles attack. Nope, wasn't us Terran's, we were just watching, sensors aren't even on.....
Just a thought, and probably a nightmare to code, but from a diplomacy and RP standpoint, it has some potentials, for both PC and NPR races.