Sensors

How does that make sense? Why would your sensor equipment become weaker, just because you are further away from home?

On the other hand, if certain space features (like nebulas or black holes) had an effect on sensor range, then I could understand it.

It doesn't make sense, but it could slow down the initial colony rush and prevent minor races from sending out so damn many constructors to take resources before you even have a chance to get to them.

So the problem is you don't want any competition.

This is not real life, it doesn't have to make complete sense if it is good for the game play. I don't understand how that per ship sensor limit is going to help any more than ship range limit, but the problem kinda exist in the GC2 and who knows about the GC3.

Sensors had no play on the fact the minors (and the AI on harder levels) knew where the resources were. This was hard coded, they simply knew.
I do agree with the OP though that sensors in GC2 just didn't feel right. I mean, tech up to Sensors IV and build eyes of the universe and your done.

I do believe a more passive system should be employed that factor your tech levels and location in space. I do not have a good solution to offer, but i'm sure it's being looked at it.

That's something I changed in my mod. The Eyes of the Universe is still good (+5 sensor range), but no longer as OP as before (+10 sensor range, and then another +20%).

I never even bothered with sensors. I just researched to get to Eyes.

It does have to make some kind of sense, because having it work the way you describe is just going to leave a lot of people scratching their heads and going "WTF?"

If you want to attack colony spam, the way to do it is not to make everybody blind.

You talk like I was the original inventor of this solution, but I'm not. I'm merely saying something could be done and what works in the Imperium Galactica 2 might work in this too, no matter what people's fact based knowledge about space sensors say (especially the ones which are able to monitor over lightyears in mere moments). If you need excuse for such limits, lets say that those ships use a empire wide sensor network to enhance the resolution which degrades over distances. Sounds better? 

No, I think I'd rather go after the problem by going after the problem, instead of going on a roundabout thing that just makes scouting needlessly annoying.

Yea, to that I can concur. Like I said previously, there is already ship range limit (supplies) and I don't see sensor decreasing brinning much to the game with that. I dont know what is the solution and dont care much either to invent one, because that is Stardock's job.

anomalies, nebulae, asteroid belts, etc. should be turned into effective sensor interference barriers. There's also potential sensor countermeasures that could be deployed on a vessel.