We're not talking about possibilities here.
If I understand correctly, most cheats involve the client sending the wrong combat result to the server. It does not involve manipulating char/ship stats permanently, because I would suspect the server would pick up such a mismatch immediately (it should at least).
With a fixed input data (combat participants, set of player moves), the output data is always the same. It's like a transcribed game of chess. So the device is not going to play through the battle several times and determine if it may be possible - it will just go through the fixed algorithm of one set combat and return the result which will always be the same. No animations, no waiting for input, no randomness, just calculating a function, which would not take much processing power per combat. Obviously it takes too much power to do it server side, or they would be doing it already, which is why distributing these small calculation to other random clients may be a viable solution.
It is not against any policies if the player accepts it, by using the app. No data would be transferred or handled unless you are actively playing the game. You help verify one combat just before you do your own combat - and you wouldn't even notice it happening.
