This study evaluates the robustness of ANFIS, hybrid GA-SVM, and SVM under synthetic time-series structures using a factorial simulation framework combined with empirical validation. From a practical perspective, robust coal price forecasting is essential for supporting energy planning, trade management, and policy decision-making under uncertain market conditions. Empirical analysis of Indonesian coal prices reveals nonstationary behaviour, high volatility, and nonlinear dynamics. Forecasting performance is assessed using walk-forward validation, where SVM and hybrid GA-SVM demonstrate comparable accuracy and outperform ANFIS on the empirical dataset. To systematically examine model sensitivity to structural variations, a factorial simulation design is implemented by varying seasonality, volatility, and predictor–response structure across 12 scenarios with 100 replications each. The results indicate that volatility is the most dominant factor affecting forecasting error, with significant interaction effects among structural factors. ANOVA and post hoc analysis further confirm that model performance depends more on data characteristics than on algorithmic complexity. These findings demonstrate that factorial simulation provides a systematic and robust framework for evaluating forecasting models beyond conventional empirical comparisons, while offering deeper insight into the relationship between data structure and model performance.