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Okay, 1st off I appreciate any help/advice that any of you can provide. Here's the deal, I'm taking a "simulation" course that apparently requires us to do some graphics programming. I'm not knocking game dev., but I prefer my Data Mining

Anyway, I'm supposed to do a simulator with two space ships with laser beams (sigh). The goal isn't to be "pretty", it's just to have have two objects shooting at each other. I've been playing with DarkGDK and C++ Express Edition and I've found a version of a pong example that I've been modifying to suite my needs. I've changed the size/shape of the paddles and let them be ships and changed the size of the ball to be the laser.

Here's where I need some suggestions. Should I add another ball (one for the other ship)? Should I just keep the location of the ball at the same location of the paddle? I'm having problems when the ball goes off the screen getting the ball to automatically go back to the original spot.

Feel free to make any suggestions. I like games, but have no desire to get too far deep into this

First off, welcome to the forums. Now for your simulation I have a few questions;
1)is it comp vs comp?
2)3d space or 2d top view? (you said you were modifying a pong code...might not be the best thing)
3)what AI features do you want included?

Now, if I was creating said simulation, I'd start from scratch. First thing to decide is if you want true space physics or 'arcade' physics. Depending will change your simulation style a lot.

Next I would give each ship a weapon that can fire in any direction, but there are limits;
1)they must charge the weapon
2)they must calculate the enemy's trajectory and fire at that point in space
3)there's a cooldown, BUT, I could also have it to where they can override the cooldown and keep firing, but this in turn would overheat and potentially destroy their weapon

For AI;
1)real space physics
2)able to detect weapon charge and attempt to maneuver
3)aggressive and defense maneuvering
4)other space objects interaction(?), if you want to expand

Once you have all these factors in place, with a random seed at the start of each run, you could have an infinite possible outcome each time.

media for simulation:
1)ship
2)laser texture
3)engine glow texture
4)skysphere

As for programing all this, I'd go through the forums and look up basic AI techniques, physics movement and particle emitters. In the end you'll have to create something on your own that suits your simulation.

Good luck!

(p.s. this is probably the wrong board)