Kobayashi Maru/Simulation Mod?

[Dash_Headlong]

This could probably be done through simple save state-hacking but as I lack the technical expertise I thought I'd pitch the idea to the community.

I think it would be infinitely useful (and fun) to be able to set up specific battles with full control over all the minutiae. You know, being able to set up how much hull you/they have, weapon load outs, crew (including health and experience levels), even individual tile/room oxygen level and fires. Basically its "I want to put this ship, with this stuff, in this condition against this other ship, with this stuff, in this condition."

It would be a nice way to practice with weapons that you don't get a chance to see much (I think I've seen ONE anti-bio beam in my several-months-now FTL career) and a great way for people who are struggling to work on their crisis management skills.

I don't know about how it would fit into "normal" gameplay. Personally, my ideal version would just be Customize Conditions->Fight->Win/Lose->Customize Conditions. Imagine the fun you could be having in a Kestrel with 5 Zoltans, no shields and no reactor bars against a Rebel with nothing but fire weapons. Can you take them out before your crew (and power supply) get flash-fried? Tune in next week!

But seriously, it'd be a fun community thing, too. We could swap challenges around, see who can make the most epic triumph of the face of (yet more) absurdly stacked odds.

Here's to winning the no-win scenario!

[Vhati]

This could probably be done through simple save state-hacking

Half of it. No expertise needed.

You can customize your own ship. And any ship next to you.
Except nearby ships are always non-hostile when the game saves/loads as far as I can tell.
IIRC you can plant non-player crew on your ship, but they're not violent.

When the editor learns to add ship events to surrounding beacons, then you could choose the fight on the next hop, at least from among types of encounters the game normally provides through events (no fine-grained customization).

Still, you can cripple your own ship, and litter it with fires, breaches, damaged/ionized systems, low-oxygen rooms, and injured crew. Even give yourself the helm of non-player ships. Then fight whomever you happen to bump into.

[Kieve]

The original Engi Assimilator could qualify for that, I think.
Main reason I like Infinite Space (most of the time), some of those cruiser fights are just "Holy crap, how do I survive this?"

[thashepherd]

There's a practical way to do this, as I do something similar to test Sonata.

Someone could write a simple script to edit events.xml and sectorData.xml to create a test event spawning a ship of your choice with a near-100% probability on the first hop of a new game. (I say near-100% because it's hard to get the math right WRT the galaxy generator)

A more advanced script might dynamically create encounters by editing events_ships.xml, or dynamically create/modify non-player ships by editing autoBlueprints.xml. The downside to this approach is that the player must restart the game to apply changes, but a slick interface could make it fun regardless.

[Vhati]

This could probably be done through simple save state-hacking

When the editor learns to add ship events to surrounding beacons, then you could choose the fight on the next hop, at least from among types of encounters the game normally provides through events (no fine-grained customization).

This is doable in v14, btw. The whole sector can be a gauntlet.