Proposal - Spacecraft-Designs Testbed-Simulation in-game

[MikeGER]

Proposal for a Spacecraft Design Testbed-Simulation either immersive in-game or as just as part of the Tutorial

When i developed new weapons, gadgets and spacecraft technologies i often don't know how those new toys are actually best implied for the tactical battles.
(what rock-paper-shotgun work actually really against what, and how to counter it with a shiny countermeasures gadget to what degree and so on...)
Well, i could build a fleet send them into a fight to test it, but when my understanding of how new things in the gameworld would (or should) work is wrong the resources are lost, and the whole game effort experiences to that point is all to often ruined.

(OK i can save, take some time to build a big test-fleet, try to find an opponent, who may or may not have the expected composition of enemy ships in his fleet so that i may or may not can target one of his ships with the news design, play the tactical battle partially ...learn from it, and then load the saved game with the whole empire-status from 25 years ago, and rinse and repeat ...but thats not immersive! that is kind of reengieering the inner game engine mechanics, its kinds more of a work for a software-engineer then fun in leisuretimes )

So here my proposal in an immersive way to deal with the problem and fitting to the story line
Its is a simple testbed-button in-game next to ship design which starts a small simulated tatcical battle.
where you can send a limited number of fighter - lets say 10 - , or 1 single bigger ship, of your designs against an enemy fleet (tech only what you have already encountered in your battles or by espionage) also only 10 fighters or 1 big ship.

Now you can check how your new Fighter, Interceptor or Friagtte will probaly deal with the enemy assets you have seen.

Think about it as simulation on the empires warfare-center HQ computers, where the engineers would testbed a new ship design with your available tech, against the threats the empires has already painfully encounter in battle, to optimize the new designs, before real production get authorized .

Maybe even let those simulation run take a month of time and some resources ...like it would in be in 'real life' in our universe on planet Earth
and also plausible assortment of necessary buildings (research centers and shipyard) and an assortment of techs (like Fast Computers) has to be available before the "testbed-simulation" button get unlocked on that planet.

What do you guys think?

[Ufnv]

Yes, I will be adding this.

Actually, arena is already there, but currently it is invoked via a command prompt, so it's the matter of UI.

[TheFlemishDuck]

How do you use arena/the prompt? I havn't found the key for the console, will the console give me a list of commands with options if i type in "help"?

[Firefox440]

The instructions are in the guide from moddings corner section.

[jomni]

The instructions are in the guide from moddings corner section.

Where exactly?

[Firefox440]

Here viewtopic.php?f=425&t=71102

[MikeGER]

jomni,

what i have found out so far (running the beta 1.03b the SteamVersion)

you will find on your main HDD in the directory C:\Users\"your name"\Documents\My Games\Polaris Sector\BattleInfo
there is the file battle.info (the last battle you faught in your actual campaign, i guess?)
which may look like that as an example:

First_side 6
Ship
Design "Strike Corvette- local-2"
hp 1616 rockets 0 retreat true inner 0 exp 0


Second_side 9
Ship
Design "Pir_Fighter_hard" Type aisFighter Role Multipurpose
hp 76 rockets 1 retreat false inner 0 exp 0
Ship
Design "Pir_Fighter_hard" Type aisFighter Role Multipurpose
hp 76 rockets 1 retreat false inner 0 exp 0
Ship
Design "Pir_Fighter_hard" Type aisFighter Role Multipurpose
hp 76 rockets 1 retreat false inner 0 exp 0

END

copy that diretory and content and rename it -lets call it- "TestBattle"

here it should be possibel to set up/ (at least manipulate number of participants) in the battles with a text editor.
well, if you know (maybe copy/paste from older storedaway battle.info files from the game) the design names of ships you want to partipate?
(they have to be found in the according designs.dat file in that directory so)

then fire up Polaris Sector, only the start-up Slitherine nag screen (to get Steam knowing 'its vaild' to run the programm ) but dont press Play Game
instead build a link on the desktop with the property "H:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Polaris Sector\PolarisSector.exe" -start "Testbattle"
(H:\ is where my Steam folder is installed atm)

start that link instead and after some loading PS will start directly with the battle screen... where one Human (race ID 6) Corvette of my design fight against 3 Pirate (race ID 9) Fighters


for the real deal
... i m still browsing through all the modding info pdf's from the link above, how to actually generate my own battle correctly from inside Polaris Sector with "console" commands? mabye its in the editor with key commands. ?