Hi there team. One feature I think would be very useful for any Aurora player who has created a fleet that hasn't yet been battletested would be a tab or maybe an option that would be called "War game exercises" whereupon the player would select a fleet that would then be duplicated, with the one just created an opposing force that would fight against the player's fleet. Why this? Because, it would offer a chance to for the player to test his strategies and develop new ones without the necessity of fighting against an alien fleet and understand what tactics work and what don't, because by the time the player meets the invaders and the swarm without having his fleet battletested, it might be too late.
Therefore, I propose this feature in order to have a quick battle, where the AI would handle the "enemy exercise fleet", a mirror image of the player fleet, to develop strategies and tactics, without actually sending the fleet in harm's way to find out, much like navies do, nowadays.
This feature could be expanded to include a "best enemy configuration known" tickbox, where known enemy (or other alien encountered designs) could be used as the OPFOR, even having an entire enemy fleet created that would be used that way. The point is to be able to fight against whomever the player chooses in theory, finding out what to look for or guard against without losing any ships. I think that the actual implementation of such a feature would be easy (in the case of duplication of the selected player fleet) or difficult, (because then the game would have to keep track of every enemy design and present them to be chosen as the OPFOR fleet, however, I do think that the game holds them already, therefore I think it can be done). Other choices would be the system where the sim battle would be fought (of every explored system that the empire (or other name that the players' state would have) has reached so far) and maybe a specific location within that system.
I think that this would be a powerful tool that the player could employ to understand precisely the strengths and weaknesses of his fleet and plan accordingly, so that when combat occurs, his losses will be minimal while his performance optimal (because he will have been able to have tested everything before hand, if he so chooses).