Looking at the number of replies for Gratuitous Tournament Round 1 it is proving to be very popular. So how about implementing this into the game?
There can be ‘Open Tournament’, ‘Private Tournament’, and ‘Instant Tournament’.
Open or Private Tournaments simply require that all fleets be submitted over any period of time. Once all the slots are filled the tournament commences and the winner is eventually determined. The main issue to resolve is how random factors in the game will affect the outcome on different runs of the battle. Ideally, anyone should be able to run the tournament battles on their computer and see the same outcome. If not, there will need to be a tournament host, and that will mess up the ‘submit over any period of time’ component. It would also need replays to allow others to view the tournament, which is not ideal.
Instant Tournament can simply select random challenges from the challenge list and you can put your personal fleet in to the tournament and see if you can win.
Would Gratuitous Tournament not be an extremely popular game mode?
Here’s a tacky, incomplete, concept picture: