Active Sensor Burst increases your sensor range by 3000 units. Per the tooltip of that (and a few other abilities), the size of one map grid cell (and one radar circle) is 2000 units. Given that your fleet has some base sensor range, and the object being detected has some sensor profile, ASB will generally bring your effective detection range to around 5000, which is also the sensor range cap. So, about 2.5 grid squares or so. Less if the target is going dark etc.
I was meaning the range at which you can identify the composition of a fleet or abandoned star base; ie "Unidentified Contact" becomes a "Research Base" or a fleet of warships, which seems to be quite a bit smaller range than the actual "soft" detection range.
If you look at that picture above that I posted (even though I was wrong about the rings, thanks for clearing that up), you still can't make out the details of the contact even though you know it's there. Using the eye to gauge distance by referencing the star (~2000 units by the radar if I'm reading that right), I think it's about 400 units away roughly? Just wondering if there is a good rule of thumb to determine roughly when an unknown contact will become visible (eg 1/3 of the actual distance it gets detected at).
Hmm. It feels to me like either these bonuses are minor enough (and so fairly inconsequential, i.e. why do it?) or major enough that you'd be often looking to gain an edge using them even if it leads to weird gameplay. I.E. it wouldn't be good if, say, you felt like to win a specific fight - or even just take minimal losses - you'd have to lure a fleet back to an asteroid belt and then "ambush" them. Having to do that would get old pretty quick.
Something like a different type of battle being started is potentially more interesting, but perhaps even more prone to being exploited (of course you could try for some safeguards, but if there's anything players are great at, is working around them unless they're completely bullet proof), and working out the details of how those (not the safeguards, the actual engagements) would work is tricky to say the least. Just a lot of edge cases there, i.e. what happens when a fleet is too large to deploy, etc.
So, generally, I'm pretty wary of tying in campaign map location/terrain to direct in-combat advantages.
What about using it purely as an escape mechanic?
So far if you are hiding away a fleet can still find you fairly easily even after going dark since it's pretty easy to determine the last location you were at before going dark. At this point I'm probably thinking I should of just emergency burned out of there in the first place.
What if on the other hand the fleet had to locate you even after your fleet circles made contact; ie you could have the same fleet dialogue pop-up give you an option to escape with the chances being based on how dark you were to the enemy looking for you.
This would tend to favour smaller fleets (or Phase ships) more due to their smaller signature allowing escape more easily, while larger fleets would have a harder time so their chance to escape would be lower.
Basically a successful escape roll would be the same as the hostile fleet never locating you so they continue their scan and eventually resume their normal patrols (of course any movement within range of the patrol even after "winning" an escape can grab the attention of the hostile fleet again).
Edit:Took far too long putting my post together that intrinsic_parity's came up before I had finished. Just reading through that post and the ambush piracy idea is fairly interesting as well...something along the lines of attacking the supply ships, and then trying to escape successfully in order to make away with the loot? Perhaps a way to try and steal cargo from a much larger force without getting into a real battle (if you can successfully escape after that ambush).