You know, I’m on level 40 or so and have been operating under the assumption that an open battle would bring every unit in the map over to the fight. But just now in the Cutlands, that was disproven. Or it was a bug. Got into an accidental battle with a whole bunch of robots, because somehow even though I thought I had used all silents and were out of the overlap circles, I guess either I did something wrong or the game bugged. I thought that fight had cleared everything, until I ran into three other robots (two stationary, one patrol) at the other end of the map.
If you start an open battle you just draw the attention of “nearby” enemies. (whatever “nearby” means)
On some maps it seems the enemies can hear you over a greater radius, on other maps (like the map filled with Polis-Bots) you can start a fight on one side and just draw the attention of just a few bots.
I guess a visible marker to know how many enemies you draw per zone would just be too much.
It lockes like the small flying scout robots can have a radio link that can activate other robots even if they are EMP´d. Move them but not activate them.