Can we have a battle simulator?

[LoBlo]

I'm thinking Space Empires V type battle simulator? Something that can be accessed in-game for new ship test on known enemy warships.

LB

[100thMonkey]

I haven't played Space Empires V, but a way to easily setup tests for ship designs and fleet compositions against enemy ships and fleets would be great.

The key word here is "easily". The current game editor allows to setup such tests, but "easy" isn't a word that would come to mind to describe the process.

[rxnnxs]

I remember the editor being very very easy.

Let me see if I can upload a quick "lets fight against an opponent".

Here is the Video
https://youtu.be/hvPo19KZznI

[100thMonkey]

@rxnnss

Yes, setting up something like that is easy. But let's say you're in mid to late game, and you've just create some new designs, some of which have starfighters. And you want to test how different fleet compositions using these new designs would fare against a known enemy fleet with specific designs in it.

I can tell you that when I tried to setup tests along those lines, it wasn't as easy as what's shown in the video.

First there was a lot of scrolling involved to get to the designs I wanted to include in the test. And I mean A LOT of scrolling (the new designs were all at the end of a long list of ships/designs). Also, I had to wait a very long time for the fighters to be built.

It's doable. But in my opinion, the process could be greatly improved.

For instance, by adding a sort option in the editor so that the latest designs could be at the beginning of the list instead of being at the end of it. Early game, it doesn't matter; there isn't much scrolling involved to reach the end of the list. But mid to end game, that's another story. Filters by ship role would also be useful.

Also, it would be nice to be able to put in ships with fighters and bombers already built, instead of having to wait, and wait, for them to be built (when I did those test setups, the 8X speed wasn't available; but even at 8X, a fairly long wait would be involved, for each test).

[rxnnxs]

You are totally right.
I doubt this will ever be implemented.

Star Ruler 2 has the best quick and easy Simulator i can think of.

https://youtu.be/ki_ydyPsYAo

[100thMonkey]

In one of the FAQ threads, there's a mention of a "Generate Scene Fleet vs Fleet" tool that was used by the devs (mostly Elliot I presume) to set up combat tests. They apparently discussed leaving it in the game at release, but they decided no to. Not having been part of the initial beta tests, I haven't seen nor use that tool. Still, I'd like to try it. Hopefully, at one point, they will make it available to players.

If interested, here's the link:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1#p5042201

[twent]

It would be great to have a simulation feature!

Two other games come to mind which did have simulation feature (1 vanilla, 1 with a mod):
* Starsector does have a simulator feature https://fractalsoftworks.com/2024/03/13 ... ancements/
* Kerbal Space Program has a mod called KRASH that does simulation https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/to ... en-change/

In one of the FAQ threads, there's a mention of a "Generate Scene Fleet vs Fleet" tool that was used by the devs (mostly Elliot I presume) to set up combat tests. They apparently discussed leaving it in the game at release, but they decided no to. ...

In my opinion, having Simulator feature as a Main Menu option to go into and run some sims would be good yes.

What would really make it much more useful is, if it is an integrated feature of the main game, so while running your campaign game, you pick your Fleet1 and also pick one enemy fleet and let them fight in a new simulation screen. The word SIMULATION can be somewhere hard to miss to distinguish it from the actual game fights.
Would be great to have the option to add more than one fleet to either/both sides too as it does happen during the campaign.

[100thMonkey]

What would really make it much more useful is, if it is an integrated feature of the main game, so while running your campaign game, you pick your Fleet1 and also pick one enemy fleet and let them fight in a new simulation screen.

Would be great to have the option to add more than one fleet to either/both sides too as it does happen during the campaign.

Agreed. Being able to do these things would be great!

Ideally, it should be possible to add, in the combat simulation, any number of fleets from any number of empires. Either by choosing existing fleets (should be possible to insert multiple copies of a chosen fleet), or by specifying their compositions, using any of the available designs available to the empire the fleets belong to.

I don't know how much the "Generate Scene Fleet vs Fleet" tool fulfill our "requirements" or not. But I'd prefer having it available, even if it has limitations, rather than having only the game editor.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my opinion the editor works really well for most circumstances to do battle testing, I have done plenty tests. Sure, they could build a tool for making it way smoother and easy.

But.... why should they prioritize this rather fringe essentially unnecessary feature rather than adding more meaningful content to the game?!?

Doing this means there is something else they will NOT do. I would put this feature very low in the priority list as we already can do it albeit with more effort need from our side.

[Ax]

Maybe not a complex battle simulation, just an arena for 1 v 1 ship battles. That doesn't seem like too much work... You could design and save the ships and then let them go at it

[LoBlo]

So in Space Empires V, in your ship design window was a 'battle simulator'. It loaded a selection screen that allows you to create two teams and populate the team with known ship designs, both your own designs and known enemy designs.

Sometimes you could even pit your own designs against either other to see the strengths and weakness of each.

Real navy's do this with war games all the time.

lb