[request] Testing mode for custom items balancing

[SAS]

I'd like to request a special mode that makes it easy to test modded items. A way to do it could be giving the player a lot of money at the start and making every item and ship available for purchase at every station. The mode isn't meant to be played as normal. It would be really handy for testing your items on rare endgame ships some of which require guild grinding and are very expensive. I'd love to play my game aiming to own a fast and agile Battlestation at some point knowing it is well tested and will work just right.

[Cornutopia]

Good idea.

[Sotho Tal Ker]

You can use the cheats for this. :)

[Cornutopia]

I forgot about this. Yes, cheats can help, but a specific testing mode might be useful. A super cheat of invincibility/infinite money/revealed map/all stations containing all equipment... though this would completely spoil the game for beginners as a big part of the game is discovery... perhaps a flight-test universe for ships, or a way to specifically test one new ship, the one you're designing.

[SAS]

It may be mentioned only in the Technical Manual and involve setting an out-of-game-menu configuration option that make the game look clearly like a testing ground and by that not attracting casual new players too much if they don't want to begin with modding the game themselves. Maybe a launch option or a public branch chosen in steam settings for the game (or a private with the password written in the Technical Manual etc). I assume some debug numbers or visuals may discourage an average gamer from spending too much time in it with no specific goal. And add an easy to notice and follow instruction on how to return to the normal intended gameplay; or a button during the start of the game so it is simple to just go on and play normally if someone turned it on by mistake or bad advise.
An indirect consequence to this approach might be emerging of more complete guides on the community pages that would on the one hand remove the need to mess with moddev gamemodes by yourself and on the other encourage completionist players to find rare content. Such guides are already there but more thorough researchers would only add to someone's motivation to buy the game or spend more time playing it.
Just some thoughts.
A fast Battlestation I mentioned in the original post, just as I was afraid back then, does indeed have a minor disadvantage in turning too slow. Often exploration of a sector may consist of fast flights in straight lines separated by lengthy turnings in place. Does the turning speed in some way take in account Thruster's power? Either way it saves a lot of time and is overall an enjoyable improvement to my endgame that I tried to balance by setting the price of that high-end gear with the estimation to be comparable to a big Space Station and respecting the numerical sequences of the vanilla item variants' specification values. (>10 million is the total price of the ship and its equipment. Don't have exact numbers readily available at hand at the moment.)

[Cornutopia]

As testing is mainly flight testing, it shouldn't require spoilers. I can imagine a button on the Plugin Management page that allows you to pick any ship and add any components, then fly it in a test-drive universe with only asteroids and nebula, to practice flight characteristics.

[SAS]

Very good idea!
The existing Arcade Combat mode might be helpful too for balancing combat related equipment.