I think the ribbon would be quite a lot better if it had some depth to it.
Right now it's a zero-width strip around the edge of the screen, ships are placed as far against the edge as possible, but that makes it really hard to read when several things are in the same direction.
Adding around an inch of depth to the ribbon, so that ships that were really near would be almost an inch away from the outer edge of the screen, and ships that are really far right up against the edge, would make it much easier to read at a glance, and would also give you some judge of relative speeds and formation, without needing to add anything else to the interface, because then you can see easily if something is getting closer, staying the same, or getting further.
Here is a rather bad mockup of what I mean.
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