Should dashed lines be visible to other players?

Whilst we were waiting for our 6th player to join our maiden game I had set-up all my expeditions so that they launched at game start. We finally managed to get our 6th player to join at about 9pm which meant that the game start wasn’t going to happen until most of us were asleep for the night. So when I loaded up the game and saw that we could see everyone’s plans I was caught by surprise. I had imagined that the purpose of the 4hr game start window was to allow the last person to join a bit of a chance to talk to others before needing to send subs out. But what I discovered was a game of bluff going on in regards to unit numbers heading towards contested outposts. Sure this kick started diplomacy and strategy conversation, however I feel like it almost forced you to be online in those first few hours which were very inconveniently timed for us.

I moved on and hadn’t really thought about it since then until I realised how annoying it was that dashed lines could be seen during the ’10 minute cancel window’. Every time I wanted to plan an attack I was revealing to my potential victim that I was contemplating it. There is a quick workaround by doing all of your planning in the time machine 10+ minutes ahead, however this is just a very simple annoyance that I feel would be removed by just not showing dashed lines to others.

Is there a reason that a decision was made to show these lines? Is it purely to be able to bluff others that you might attack? It just seems to go against the “Players check in a few times each day” mantra.

it's on our list to make all cancelable orders (sub launches, hires, promotions, shield disable, gifting, etc) not visible to other players until they're final.

we initially thought it was cool in that it gives players a chance to talk and change their minds, but in reality, it just leads to the mind games you refer to.