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[Gothars]

I have just learned that the AI remembers contacts even if they go out of sensor range and continues to react to them. For example, a ship might still go to protect an "control"-marked objective even if the enemy was just visible for a second or so in the area.

The problem is the player will likely not continuously stare at the map and see every brief contact. That
1) is a tactical disadvantage, because he has no way to learn of a contact he did not see himself.
2) can be confusing if the AI reacts to something the player can't see, making him question the AI behavior.

A way to fix that would be a brief contact shadow, an afterimage of the contact. The way I imagine it, the shadow would be fixed at the edge of the sensor radius, moving along with it. It would disappear after the object reappears or after some time has passed where it did not. Maybe use the same memory time as the AI, if that works.

The shadow would have to be clearly marked a such to avoid confusion.

[Hyph_K31]

Very much in favour of this idea, it seems like something every officer should keep tabs on.

[Hyph_K31]

Very much in favour of this idea.

I need to stop saying that! Expand my thoughts a bit.

As I said before, it seems like a activity you'd dedicate a officer to on any ship. Tactical officer?

Perhaps we could expand this from being a feature that is always open to the player, and make it so that in order to access contact shadows you must either have a (tech) skill that allows your ship(s) to project the shadows on their own, or hire a tactical officer to keep tabs on ships for you.

I can't see any problems with the idea of contact shadows, as long as they are static. Although really advanced tracking s systems might project a path of known travel.

[Vind]

Very good idea. Too many times after sound of contact target is already out of sensor range and invisible in war room map.

[sdmike1]

or they could have the last known heading and speed on the image

[Gothars]

or they could have the last known heading and speed on the image

The heading and orientation are always included. See the little blue arrow? That's the heading. The red one is the direction the ship is facing in.

[Upgradecap]

I wonder, would it be a little smarter to have the last known visual contact of the enemy as a stand-still picture? Like, it not moving at all, but just sitting there without showing where that particular enemies heading, speed and direction was. This would add a little hide n' feature aswell. Not sure if wanted, but it would. Also, this way, if this could be implemented on the AI's side aswell, it means that ambushes would be easier to pull off.

[LazyWizard]

How about this? Once a ship is out of visual contact range, the image stays at that spot, faded out, and a circle gradually expands around it (the area it could reach not taking current heading or speed into account - basically a circle with a radius based on max speed and time since last contact). After several seconds, the circle stops expanding and gradually fades out. This would not only tell you that the enemy left contact area but also give you a search area, and this is the kind of assistance that I think an advanced computer interface could give.

[arcibalde]

But what if there is more then 1 ship? It would be lots and lots of expanding circles. Dunno sound cluttering to me 

[Gothars]

Sounds good at first, but there's a problem (beside what arci mentioned): if you your sight radius fills the circle the moment it disappears, it is no use to you. If it does not, the target ship could be away much further once you are in position.