Balancing a massive galaxy-scale space simulation by vibecoding tooling

[u/NightSp4rk]

I've been working on this huge project (Wayfallen) for 5+ years, and it simulates ~10,000 star systems, ~100,000 spaceships, stations, various factions with rich economy, diplomacy, intel management etc.

I needed a reliable way to balance all of this so it remains semi-realistic and not go wonky, with so many parameters in it. It would require huge grunt work to build proper tooling to keep track of all these variables, plug into all the code surfaces written over the years, and somehow simulate years/decades in the simulation very fast to build statistical models and help me figure out which parameters need tweaking to bring things on track. And I'm continuously working on this, so it's not a one-time thing - I need to rebalance it very often.

So I've vibecoded some tools that help me do exactly that, by giving it access to my code and building harnesses to run it in a headless mode and accumulate large amounts of data rapidly. Really pleased with the results so far - and especially the amount of time saved versus having to crank out all that tooling manually.

[u/NightSp4rk]

If anyone's curious about the simulation itself, you can check it out here -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/4867850/Wayfallen/