Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

Hi, just curious if anyone actually bothers to name all of their ships. (i do) just wondering...

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

Not all but the first of each desaign and
the best of the fleet.

and, of curse, the fleet leader.

bye bye

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

Only the large baseships and some of my large carriers. And somtimes an important defense base.

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Rules? What rules?

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I name them according to what class they are. i.e. when I upgrade them, I make sure I rename them to be the new class name. So, for example, Small Fighter I 0001 would become Small Fighter II 0001. But then, I'm boring =)

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

Not normally.

In one game, I did grant distinctive names to ships that'd distinguished themselves (for instance, by reaching Elite or Legendary status).

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I only individually name my ships that are very specific or expensive. For instance, many times I build a WP opener/closer with (obviously) a WP opener, a WP closer, and a SY. Another one is my Planet Seeders (Planet Destroyer / Creator / and SY). I usuualy name them and then I usually name them based on the section of the map they are designated to 'work' in. I rarely ever name other ships.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

only the famous...

nothing better than a BLÜCHER stopping a whole enemy fleet or a legendary VINCENNES light cruiser stopping an enemy invasion... http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Fred

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I name them once they complete a tour of duty.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I merged a bunch of name files that somebody posted a while back, and I just skim that for names as each ship gets built.

I usually keep a small empire, with less than ten, (avg. 7) full-time, big & tough defence ships, and a small fleet in mothballs.

EG. in my Story game, I've got 6 "Ubernaught" BCs, and one operational "Blackhole" DN. All are named.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

No, but I've gotteninto the habit of using similar ship designs and always using the same name for each design. However I use a large number of classes, so a fleet will have a Command ship, several Attack Ships, a few Planatary Assault Ships, a Troop Transport or 2, a couple of Carriers, a few Tanker Ships, several Point-Defense Ships, and a couple of Fast-Attack Ships... each class will have a diffrent name, so you're talking about 8 classes/names in my standard attack fleet. It would be too hard to name/remember all my ships, since I often build a lot of smaller ships... a standard attack fleet has 21, a defense fleet has 13, and a patrol fleet has 7... I easily hit upwards of 100 ships by mid-game!

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

For my big games, I usually will have after a short time three kinds of ships (sometimes four): All-purpose Attack/Defense ship, All-purpose Transport ship, Carrier, and (sometimes) Point-Defense ship. I'll just use normal SEIV naming conventions (ie Ship XII 0042, meaning it's the 12th revision on the basic design, and the 42nd ship constructed on that design).

For more "intimate" games, like SJ plays, I name my ships. My most recent one was playing with his P&N mod, I had at the end, 5 BBs (Victory, Privateer, Protector, Bucaneer, Thief), 3 DSs (Skull, Crossbones, Eyes), 2 LCs (Eliminator, Vengance), 1 CR (Refueler), 1 DN (Miner), 4 SS (Shredder 1 through 4), 1 BS (Shredder 5), and I at various points used captured enemy DNs in battle before analyzing/scrapping them, they were temporarily named "Bounty X", with X being whichever number it was in order. There were fifteen, I believe. The BBs were all of the same general design, heavy shielding, PPB Vs, a few PDLasers. Victory had a small SY, and reached 50% experience, Privateer reached 35%. Skull and Crossbones are twins, moderate shielding, HBM V, SD V, PPB V, BP V. Eyes had SD V, 3x PPB V, and HyperOptics III. Eliminator was a better shielded Skull/Crossbones. Vengance was a heavily shielded delivery vehicle for a Plague Bomb V. Refueler was all engines, supply storage, and solar collectors. Miner was a captured DN retrofitted to do mining work on asteroids. Shredders 1 thru 5 were mining bases.

For you to think, "I'm sending Victory into battle against three enemy DNs," it is so much more fun than "I'm sending BLaster XV 0174 into battle against three enemy DNs." But it's really impossible to do that for larger games except for special cases (ie, ships that have reached Legendary). Makes for good story writing in small games too http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I always name ALL of my ships - from little escorts to bulky transports - every one of them has a name.

I could never live them just numbered.

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Visit the Spoogy Federation at:
http://spoogyfederation.tripod.com

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

yes

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

Yes, each class will all have names starting with the same letter, that way I can sort by name, and in the process sort by class http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I name my ships after their ship class: when I have a 'guardian' ship class ships will be named:

Dark Guardian
Black Guardian
Red Guardian

and so on..

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I usually open a design name file and use names out of that for my ships.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

the custom shipset I use is one named after my gaming squad, so I use the names of my squadmates plus roman numerals for upgraded Versions. these are all in a design_name file and are part of the empire flie.

[This message has been edited by pathfinder (edited 19 May 2001).]

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I name ALL my ships (not only the design). It is great fun and it's nice to watch how long a single ship serves the entire fleet.

But I think I'm only doing this because I'm playing by e-mail ... I also name all planets.

ZzZ

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I usually play large games, so it's hard to name the amount of ships in my Navy. Really impressive ships with great service usually merit a special name, though.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

There is what I do now, and what I wish the game had a feature to let me do.

What I do now is to name the class using a naming convention which is in three parts: a type designator, a name & a Roman numeral.

The type designator for warships is ES, FF, DD, CL, CA, BC, BB, DN & SD (I like calling Baseships "Superdreadnoughts"). For carriers I use CVL, CV & CVA. For anything not a warship I use a three letter designator beginning with A (for Auxilliary, following USN practice). For example small, medium & large transports are AKS, AKM & AKL, respectively. Mostly after the A comes something to remind me what the ship is for, for example AML is a mine layer.

For the class name I have a set of them I like to use over & over for ships of a given type. For example, by my great uncle was a Chief Petty Officer on a minesweeper in WWII, so I always name my minesweeper class Hobson after him.

The Roman numerals are assigned sequentially as I retrofit the class. I tend to do that when I have the tech to add 1 to the ship's speed. If I have an upgrade which does not increase speed, I'll append a lower case letter after the Roman numeral.

For individual ships, I just let the program append those 4 digit sequential numbers to the class name. The exception is CVA's, since I don't build very many of them. They get individual names, generally after real world carriers.

What I wish the game would do is let me specify a separate name file for each class when I design the class. The way this would work is every time you build a ship of that class it will use the next name in the file - falling back on the current class name plus 4 digit number if it runs out of names in the file. Then I'd go through the trouble to create the files for all my standard classes once and use them over & over.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 19 May 2001).]

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I don't name specific names to my ships (or classes). I use a number system similar to what you see in Star Trek (similar to the shows Hull regestry numbers). I know, kinda corney, but they really help in large PBEM games with your ships.

Their are basically type of Indicators on my hull regester system. The "Construction" Label is first, followed by a dash, then the actual Specific hull number. The Construction Label describes what the vessels role is in the fleet (ex. CV would be carrier). The first letter is always "C" which means construction. The second letter descibes the role of the vessel...

V= Carrier
W= Warship
m= Minelayer/Sweeper (I make these ships use both components)
S= Scout
J= Auxilary Vessel (Basically freighter hulls converted to be used in the Fleet)
etc...etc...etc...

The Regestry number describes the ships actual count in the fleet. The first number describes the ships size with the fleet. Since ship hulls that are close to one another have only a slight edge in combat, I divide my the number group between 4 types ... light hulls "1", Standard Hulls "2" (work horses of the fleet, usually CL's and Destroyers), Heavy Hulls "3" (big ships like Crusiers mostly), and finally Massive Hulls "4" (Battleships, Dreadnoughts etc.). So a Battleship would have this type of hull regestry....

CW-423-a

The "23" indicate how many vessels of its size in the fleet (hehe... Doesn't nessesarly mean that their are only "23" Massive vessels within my fleet! This is another number system that is considered "classified" under my system.). The "a" letter indicates that it received a refit. It may also be applied to class designs to indicate a refit to a designs hull as well.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I usually name the class of ship when it is designed, then add proper names to each individual ship based somewhat on the class name. For example, I might create a "Storm" Class Battlecruiser, and subsequent names would include, "Tempest", "Maelstrom", "Hurricane", etc. Another example is the "Blade" Class Dreadnaught, and proper names in that Category would include, "Scimitar", "Broadsword", and "Rapier", for instance.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

I don't generally use unique names for each ship; I do, however, have my own design names file that I created for SE3 & have copied into my SE4 installation. It's a list of composers taken from the index of a music history book. The file is posted in the Space Empires: IV - Data/Sound/Graphic Modifications forum.

Re: Do any of you actually name your ships?
 

If you want to name your ships and do not have a handy list available. you can use this link
http://www.ruthrauff.net/d20/star_wars/ship-names.html

It randomly generates ship names