Having the ability to start battles from the command line listing ship files, factions, and AI's would allow for both tournaments, my own AI projects, and much more. The only ways to do that currently are scripts that are iffy at best and doing some questionable things with the local multiplayer system.
Adding the ability to start a match from the command line
So I suspect you will want to be able to run multiple matches in a row, correct? If so, then I think what you really want, so that you don't have to wait for the game to restart every time for a new match, is to have some sort of "interactive" mode where you can send commands to the game via standard input and get match results via standard output. That is certainly doable and I will add it to my list, but isn't a super high priority right now.
Walt I wrote the minimum you would need to add, to hopefully have it added a bit quicker. What you said though would be amazing.