fleet naming algorithm :(

[Lemmy]

it sucks...no really it does, especially for someone like me with no imagination to name my own fleet.
at the start of the game each fleet you create is named after a letter in the greek alphabet, your first fleet is Alpha fleet, second Beta Fleet etc...
but when you make your 30th fleet, and i mean the 30th fleet through the entire game, while you only have one fleet, it's named Alpha Zeta Fleet or something, why not Alpha or Beta Fleet again
and after the double greek letters, you get Alpha Fleet, that's right....with a double space
edit: looks like double spaces are deleted

ok, frustation is leaving....leaving.....and gone, that feels better

[This message has been edited by LemmyM (edited 22 August 2001).]

[Taqwus]

Any idea why letters are used instead of numbers? (Or, for that matter, system + number?)

Incidentally, after some point you get *blank* fleet name defaults. I ran into this in my Mr. Nice Superpower game, when I started putting Sentinel starbases in their own little fleets for the extra +20% training bonus -- I'd already gone through many names via groupings and regroupings, and numerous defense fleets stationed throughout.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[capnq]

quote:

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Any idea why letters are used instead of numbers?

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This is pure speculation on my part, but my theory is that fleets use Greek letters to differentiate them from ships, which use numbers, and planets, which use Roman numerals.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[dogscoff]

Why not have fleet names picked from a text file like ship names? That'd keep everyone happy.

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SE4 Code:
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/SE4 Code
http://www.sandman43.fsnet.co.uk/se4main.htm

[dmm]

Just my personal bias, but I don't think you should ever have more than a few dozen fleets. Takes the meaning out of the word "fleet" if you have several hundred. Making a single ship/base a fleet just to get a bonus is exploitive -- the kind of thing I used to do to my brothers when we were kids, and they'd accuse me of "pulling a rule" on them.

I can understand the need for temporary "fleets" since there's no way to make battle Groups or task Groups. Naming them is easy: "temp". Or something like "ROC+T+E" for "rock oxygen colonizer plus transport plus (armed) escorts."