Manage enemy progression with Exposure#30

Exposure being an abstract measure of everything you do that entities far away might notice and find suspicious.

What might increase Exposure?

1. Emitting heat as in infrared radiation is one of the big ones.
   There might be ways to radiate heat less efficiently, but only in one direction, resulting in less Exposure. Heat sinks full of hot coolant might be sent on a long orbit elsewhere to radiate heat where it’s expected. There might be artifacts that lower the amount of heat your structures generate when they work.

2. Talking with, and interacting with others who may communicate with other about your discussions and leaving them alive will of course also result in increased Exposure - but if the things they report are not threatening it might lower interest. This gives the player control over how they manage their interstellar reputation. The Urso might hate you just for being different and the most fanatic may come visit for a fun little crusade on their own dime, but you may not be an Urgent problem as far as their overall civilization knows.

3. If you attack an enemy base they might have a couple of long range comm structures that will count down until they send a message to their other colonies that they have been attacked, resulting in a much larger increase in Exposure than if the colony had just gone silent with no explanation. Of course, if enough colonies in an area go silent it doesn’t become hard to put two and two together - but their leadership might initially not be that concerned about fringe colonies as it’s Not Their Problem.
   Well, until it becomes abundantly clear that the most recent colonies to disappear are uncomfortably close to them.

4. Building near life-bearing worlds and stars may generate much less heat based on infrared radiation, but much more based on being exposed to the light of the star and the public nature of life-bearing worlds (presumably near a star or with some very advanced power generation). This is where exposure might be generated simply based on size of factory within a certain distance of the star and the counterplay is to avoid building more than necessary near that star until you are ready to handle the attention it brings.
   In fact, covering up too much of the star may increase exposure - especially something like a full dyson swarm. Everyone with even a small fraction of astronomers watching the stars will notice that a huge amount of one star’s visible light in an astronomical blink of the eye turned into infrared light. Of course - maybe dyson swarms can defend themselves very well from anyone who tries to attack up close. Maybe the enemies will instead start constructing some kind of long-range weapon project that must be dealt withh before it completes.