May or may not be up your street, but what I did when figuring out Sub Command (i.e. Dangerous Waters 1 if you like), was to create a mission in the editor with all kinds of ships surrounding me and set them all up so none of them were hostile to me, in order that I could practice detecting them without having to worry about being fired on or complete a mission or whatever. You can do this without setting the actual location of the ships you intend to practice on, as there is an option to have them spawn at a random location in an area you specify, so it can still be a challenge. The other thing this achieves, is to give you an idea of the kind of triggers there are in the sim, which is a good pointer for the kind of limits you can be on and what the enemy ships objectives can be.
The mission editor in Dangerous Waters is very intuitive, so it will not take you long to set up such a mission for yourself.
Chock