Do you have scenario-testing tools?

[mindloss]

If you want to see five hundred flak cannons vs five golems, do you guys (read: devs) have a reasonably easy way to set that up short of playing a game to that point? I mean, I noticed that list of cheats, I guess that's a step in that direction...

(Lots of bonus points if that's a hidden feature built into every copy of the game!)

[x4000]

We don't particularly test odd scenarios aside from playing the game and playing player saves.  One player is a good way through working on a map editor in java, although I haven't heard from him in a while.

[keith.lamothe]

Generally if I'm balance testing it's some stuff of mine vs some mobile AI force so I just set it up on one planet and enter "warp in the clowns,Bomber,500" in the chat thing and it will send in a wave of mkI bombers of about 700 in size (depending on cap scale, the third parameter is something of a coarse one).

For more general balance questions I usually rely on numerical/statistical analysis.

For more complex scenario testing it's generally necessary to have a "valid" gamestate, i.e. one arrived at through more-or-less natural means (tons of "activate the omega", "engies", and "give me k" activations fit within that, generally), and a scenario builder or whatever is likely to generate gamestates that vary significantly from what players would actually see.

And tons of stuff can basically only be really tested if the players give us a save where something is about to happen   Even if it's something really simple or early it's just impossible to know if the key thing leading to whatever oddness was one of the things left out in our attempted re-creation, etc.

[Toranth]

We don't particularly test odd scenarios aside from playing the game and playing player saves.  One player is a good way through working on a map editor in java, although I haven't heard from him in a while.

Have you published the saved game format somewhere?  I took a quick look, but did not find it on the wiki anywhere.

[x4000]

We have not, but the player in question was reverse engineering it with our permission and asking clarifying questions.  We just haven't had time to publish it, but it's a pretty straightforward format, really; it's a compressed flat file, but the game is capable of reading them uncompressed as well.