Naming Ships
 

I don't really know how many of you name your ships as they are constructed, but I would hope to say that some of you do.

I do. I find that it adds a lot of realization to the game, and gives me something to write about as these ships pass thru time and space.

I recently lost one of my ships, the RSS Yorktown. She was the second of the Enterprise Class Battlecruisers constructed during the war I was having with the Rebel Alliance. The Yorktown was a pivital ship in the destruction of the Rebels, and held the honor of making the most first contacts in my empires history.

After 200 turns, (20 years) she was destroyed by a bad warp point into a massive black hole system.

It was odd the feeling I had when I realized that I was about too loose a ship that had done so much for my empire. All of the ships that came before her say for the Enterprise had fallen. The Enterprise was recalled to our homeworld and mothballed for pasterities sake. She was 202 turns old, or 20.2 years old. The oldest ship in my fleet and empire that spanned nearly 400 turns, or 40 years.

SO ya, if you name your ships, and are able to keep them around for a long time, when they are lost, you feel as if you have lost a peace of your empire. An important, peace to be sure.

Re: Naming Ships
 

I drink for the crew of the Yorktown! <raises glass> http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Naming Ships
 

A good source for ship names is www.warships1.com. It has a listing and stats of virtually every warship from every nation since 1890s.

The British Navy is perhaps the best source of really cool names. Their navy alone could probably support numerous txt files for the names of a number of custom races.

Re: Naming Ships
 

I name ships after they've survived their first action.. non-combat ships gennerally don't get the honor unless they manage to accidently kill something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (ramming colony ships anyone?)

Phoenix-D

Re: Naming Ships
 

Usually my games have too many ships to try and neame them. Well giving them names isn't hard, but remmebering which ship did what is. In my RP and story games I usually have half a dozen or so tops with names and the rest are just numbers.

Geoschmo

Re: Naming Ships
 

An easy way to remember them is create a Monument

Had about 25 names in mine during a war with the krill.

Re: Naming Ships
 

It depends. I name ships that gain anything above +5 experience. Then if they are lost, the next warship to roll of the line gets it's name. In one game I had a ship called the Vorpal with +50 experience.... when my empire entered into a period where I couldn't afford to support so many ships (it was in proportions game) I began to mothball tons of ships, leaving only my best ships out of mothball. I accidently mouthballed it.

Re: Naming Ships
 

I keep my naming system simple.

Escorts are japanies names say for two (Yamamoto and Yamoto) those I use for Battleships.

Frigates I use Bird names and varations of mamimal names with birds. Black Hawk, Tiger Hawk, Star Falcon, etc.

Destroyers I use states.

Light Cruisers I use Rivers, moutains, countries.

Cruisers, Hostile names like: Vendetta, Vengance etc

Battle Cruisers I use Peoples names and sometimes Old WWII Carrier names.

Battleships, vary from Hostile names to Historical ship names like Republic, Bizmarc, etc.

Dreadnoughts I use President names, and important people like: John Wayne, George Bush, Picard, etc.

Carries have uniqe names like; Mobius, ID, Krell, etc.

Transports are named after cities.

Colony ships are always called RS Colony, IS Colony, and GS Colony.

Fighters are historical fighter names.

Base ships are named after planets and galaxies. Galaxy, Universe, Constillation, etc.

I have found that if I mass produce a ship type that I know is going to be nothing but cannon fodder, I name it as such. CF 001, CF 002, etc.

Re: Naming Ships
 

Gosh, what names are other empires allowed to use in your games, Atrocities? You claimed just about everything but a few obscure mythologies and foreign Languages... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Naming Ships
 

I tend to name my ships a variety of historical names from all navies plus a few from mythology or after space phenomena. Fighters usually get insect names like Bumblebee or Hornet while troops get bug names like Millipede or Caterpillar, etc.

Re: Naming Ships
 

Wow, I guess I'm boring. I just use whatever names are in the race file. I do try to use a naming convention to allow me to quickly understand and seperate the different kinds of ships, but still, the names come from the ship names list of the empire I am playing with at the time.

Re: Naming Ships
 

I call my drone classes Exocet (for anti-ship drones) and Scud (for anti-planetary drones).

I rarely build ships larger than battle cruisers, and those I name individually after African cities or rulers (Niamey, Abacha, Bokassa, etc).

I like to name frigates U101, etc, because of my fondness for the German WW2 submarine force.

Re: Naming Ships
 

There are CLASS names, ie the Design Names file, and then there are SHIP names. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Naming Ships
 

My favourite names are classics like "CLS 0001" and the unforgetable "DD 0002" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Anything else is just too damn confusing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif But then it is quite possible I'm easily confused.

[ June 27, 2002, 03:43: Message edited by: DavidG ]

Re: Naming Ships
 

I guess I'm boring, too, at least while I'm playing against the AI. My rock colonizers are "Rock Colonizer"; my attack ships are "Missile" or "Beam" or "Boarding," after their major weapon type. Just add water and Roman numerals for generation, and you're done!

Re: Naming Ships
 

I tend to use the initials from the hull size in the Class. I have not named individual ships, (yet). I’ve never tried to keep track of when ships were built. I guess it would be easy enough to include the year.month in the name. Example:
Fast Frigate Fragger “25.4A”
Bad A** Crusier 40.5

Re: Naming Ships
 

I used to only change the ships name, i.e.

RSS Nemesis

as the class was always written below the ship name. Once I found that the class does not appear in fleets, I added the ship type to the end of the name, i.e.

RSS Nemesis FF 0001

Incidentally, I noticed that the numbering system will go back and try to fill in any holes, so if I lose FF 0002 in a battle and build a new FF then next turn, the ship which should have been FF 0016 is now 0002. Not a big deal, just annoying.

Re: Naming Ships
 

I name my ships totally for practical reasons. I tend to play psychic most of the time so hulls tend to get refitted a lot. Every ship and base has a prefix serial number followed by the class name, which is straight out of which ever .txt file I use at the time except for the colony ships.

Auxiliay ships (transports, tankers, space yards etc) have "A" prefix followed by 3 digits, bases have a "B" prefix and 3 digits, Colony ships have a "C" preix and 3 digits, Stellar manipulate ships have "S" prefix and 3 digits (only if I'm playing against the AI), and combatants have no letter and 4 digits.

My colony ships are simply named "Rock Colony XXXX", "Ice Colony XXXX" and Gas Colony XXXX" where XXXX is the build type and generation: ## for normal colonisers, QB## for quick-built low cost colonisers, and LC## for the premium high speed light cruiser colonisers.

Like this:

A054 Titanium
B023 Oxygen
C003 Ice Colony 03
C004 Rock Colony QB01
S003 Cesium
0276 Chlorine

Somewhat complicated, but makes sorting a lot easier on the ships screen.

[ June 27, 2002, 17:30: Message edited by: CW ]

Re: Naming Ships
 

Greetings all, The current Mrs GT has gone out briefly so I can get on the computer.

Naming ships? gosh, that is something I spend an awful lot of time doing. Being a military history buff and a royal navy buff to boot, my ship classes are varied and excellent.

My design name will generally follow a format where I use ship nomenclature, a code letter to identify specialised type of vessel and then class name itself, for example

"DDm Araguia" means Araguia class missile destroyer

"DDe Javelin" means Javelin class escort destroyer

"CLa Argo II" means Argo class assault cruiser, 2nd refit

"MFt Hispaniola x-bis" means Hispaniola class military transport Xiati war specialised refit"

With regard to class names, I have absolute stacks of naval history and therefore generally enough class names to do pretty much anything....

Personal preferences are mythological names so you will always find "CLa Achilles, CLa Agamemnon, CLa Menelaus" etc in my fleets.

Oops, Grendel is coming back so I better go

Sayonara

Re: Naming Ships
 

For class names I use abreviatioms. I start with something like "ES Mk 1a" or "ES Scout Mk 1a". Upgrades are easy, I just change the Last letter. If I want very different equipment I change the Last 2 entries , "ES Mk 2a". I have created a seperate names file for myself so I can point and click a lot of this in rather then type it. Things like BSY Mk 1a = Base ship yard, ST Mk 1a = Small transport, PDB Mk 1a = Planetary defense base(weapon platform)

For specific ship names; I use Birds for ES, Fish for FG, sir names for DD, rivers for CL, Cities for CA, snakes for BC, states or countries for BB and DN, For Fighters I use Insect names, Mines are firecrackers or spider names, Sats are a mixed bag...Slinger ..Archerer, Big eye depending on what their main purpose is. For Carriers; CVL I use auto names ....Chevy, Ford, thunderbird, Bigger carriers I use Historical Battle names. Transports get girls names. SY ships get names of construction equipment. Mine and sat layers get names like "Mother Goose, Mother Hen, etc.

Bases are named after their planet, such as "Wolf III BSY 3"( the third ship yard base oriting Wolf 3) or "Epsilion V ODB 1"( the first Obital defense base orbiting Epsilion 5). This keeps them listed under their planet on the yard list, you need to use "X" for "10" if you build that high as the tenth gets listed after "1", so I use X1 for 11, XX5 for 25, etc. If you build more then 39, well, go figure it yourself, LOL!

it is interesting to see what the rest of you use. Some good ideas there.

Re: Naming Ships
 

For individual ships I use short descriptive names like FG-Ab, DD-De, and CVL-Ac
FG-Ab = Frigate size Attack ship Version b
DD-De = Destroyer Defence ship Version e
CVL-Ac = Light Carrier Attack ship Version c

For those Non-Military ships: R Ark LRa, Xport Mb and SS WPc
R Ark-LRa = Rock Colony ship Longrange Version a
Xport-Mb = Transport ship Medium size Version b
SS WPc = Special Ship Warp point opener/closer Ver. c

For fleets: I name them by what they are to be used for...
First Attack Fleet,
<System name> Defence Fleet,
etc.

I've never given my ships special individual names...after all I'm the omnipotent ruler of an entire Empire!!

Re: Naming Ships
 

I was looking at my notes. When moving Populations or Units around I name the transports acordingly.
SAT Hydro = Hydrogen Breathers in Sattelite bays
CB Oxy = Oxygen breathers in Cargo Bays
SAT TT Armored CG = Armored troops and troops with Ground Cannon in Sat Bays

Note: I very seldom use actual cargo bays to move anything.

[ June 28, 2002, 19:09: Message edited by: The High Gryphin ]