How to reset the fleet names?

[Ed Kolis]

I just ignore the default names and name them based on their composition or their role - i.e. "Fomalhaut Garrison", "Storm Manipulators", "Eastern Attack Fleet (Bacaudae CR)"... since the enemies can't see your fleet names (they can't even tell your ships are fleeted) it doesn't matter, you could create a fleet called "I'm going to destroy your star!" and they would never know!

[Slick]

I do some of my fleet naming like Ed. It has many advantages. Like Ed said, the other empires can't see your fleet names, so you don't have to worry about a secret naming convention; just name them by their job description - and you can change the fleet name any time. Also, this cuts down on micromanagement because in late game, I usually just cycle through my fleets instead of each ship each turn. If I have unfleeted ships in late game, I usually put them on some kind of warp point or planet for defense and usually don't worry about them each turn. I will give special ships orders, but it's mostly fleets at the end of the game for me. At my training centers, I keep a "holding fleet" to keep the ship display uncluttered. As ships arrive to be trained, they go into the holding fleet and I periodically create my other fleets from its ships to make my attack and other fleets. If you name a fleet "warp point defense 1", then you don't have to spend much time figuring out that it is ok to just put it on sentry duty at the warp point and move on to the next fleet. Also, I make 1-ship fleets all the time. "Capture Planet" fleets are always checked each turn as ar my "Attack" and "Defense" fleets. There is no limit to the number of fleets you can be training simultaneously at your fleet training center. If you create a bunch of fleets at your fleet training center, you can quickly create a "response fleet" and have 20% experience if you can't spend the time to train each ship. You can make "placeholder ships" just to keep 1-ship fleets active at your fleet training center. (This is somewhat of a cheesy tactic, but be sure that everyone is doing it.) A mothballed ship works fine (mothballed ships don't get ship experience from ship training centers), obsolete ships or an escort with just B/LS/CQ (very cheap to build) can be used too - the objective is to keep the fleet active at the training center until it has the full 20% training. I always ensure that I have several fully trained 1-ship fleets at my training centers for emergencies. 1-ship fleets can be used to play the "ship naming game" in multiplayer too. Whatever the name of the ship is (usually misleading or jibberish), you can safely name the 1-ship fleet by its real name without your enemy seeing it. I basically see fleet naming as a convenient, paperless way to help me keep track of things.

BTW, because I use lots of fleets, I have seen the auto naming function restart at "alpha" after some point. Not sure how many it takes to wrap around but I think it wraps around after the "alpha beta ..." series.

Slick.

[Parasite]

I think the Fleet names keep adding up as long as you use and save that empire. After Alpha Beta, the second word will change to a space, then after a while you get "alpha (space, space, space) alpha beta". I think a new empire will reset the names, of course you lose all the empire experiance. I too would like to restart it without losing the "Old" racial trait.

[ December 19, 2003, 17:05: Message edited by: Parasite ]

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Slick:
At my training centers, I keep a "holding fleet" to keep the ship display uncluttered. As ships arrive to be trained, they go into the holding fleet and I periodically create my other fleets from its ships to make my attack and other fleets.

I'm doing that too in a game I'm playing as a "trader" (hardly anyone buys anything though )... but the ships still show up on the ship list. Is there a new option in the beta to hide fleeted ships in the ship list? 'Cause if there isn't, there should be! (I think you can already hide all ships and display only fleets (or was that the other way around?), but then your unfleeted ships don't show up either, so you have to fleet everything, even loner ships... )

edit: maybe in SE5, ships will be automatically fleeted into a new fleet when constructed, and you can just merge them into the fleet you want? or even set a construction queue to build its ships into a particular fleet! I'll go suggest that...

[ December 19, 2003, 17:09: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]