Yeah, if the player could have some sort of feedback of what the state of near by fleets will be when the transponder is toggled that might be key. Would prevent having to save/reload to figure out if you were far enough away from other fleets when you turned your transponder off to "go dark". Or not, I could actually see arguments either way, but what ever the outcome here, would be interesting to see the reason behind it.
More seriously, I think it's OK not to have perfect information about your status with individual patrols. You wouldn't have, realistically. It just should be possible to reasonably guess if they might still remember you.
Still working on some of this, but the idea is you'll be able to see the detection range of other fleets. So, if you see them in the first place, you'd be able to tell if they could see you turn the transponder off. If you can't see them at all, though...
Maybe we could just fly our ships into a garage and spray paint the hull, so the patrols will forget about us?
Nnnnnnno. You can spray paint your hull, but you can't spray-paint their brain! Seriously, though, I could see how you might do something like that, or just switch out your fleet configuration, and that would theoretically factor in here, but that's one of those things that's getting too complicated, even if it may make in-fiction sense. Besides, the memory they have isn't so long as to make these things necessary. I think at most they'll remember a transponder-off fleet being hostile is something like two weeks, provided it's not in their face that entire time (in which case the timer keeps getting renewed).
Oh, Alex, will patrol commanders re-spawn with a new fleet after their current patrol ends? Or are they lost?
Currently, no, but I've been thinking about that.
Suppose you've reached the late-game and you're a renowned bounty hunter who has a perfect reputation with the local faction; is there any chance for a patrol to assume good faith if they see you with your transponder off?
Hmm. On the one hand, that sounds reasonable. On the other hand, that'd just about remove the transponder/patrol interaction from play at that point, and it's in place to give smugglers something to worry about.
Could do something like "no rep penalty, but they scan you anyway"... but I'm not sure there's a reason to delve that deep into it. If your reputation is that high, then losing a point or two really won't matter that much here.
I could see it being nice for immersion/as a way for the game to make you feel like the faction recognizes your efforts. That'd make more sense to consider when I'm more focused on that aspect of it, though, rather than as part of these core mechanics. Generally speaking, all relationship rewards (person and faction) are not exactly fleshed out right now.