How do you name your ships?

[Renegade 13]

I simply do not name individual ships, for one reason alone; time. I don't have enough time to do it for every ship, or even some of them. Because of this, I rely on what class of ship it is in order to keep track of what that ship is supposed to be doing.

For example, say I have a DUC light cruiser attack ship. I would name that class one of two things:

- Attack LC 1
- LC 1.12.12 (1.12.12 are the numbers of letters in the alphabet...therefore ATT for attack.)

Or, if this was a special class of LC, say one with phased polaron beams instead of DUC's, I'd name it either:

- Attack LC 1 (**)
- LC 1.12.12 (**)

See, my system is very simple. But then again, if I ever wanted to fool someone, they'd never expect it!

[Raging Deadstar]

Reverse Psychology is good for names

I Once named my Attack Vessels "Uber Powerful Ships Here" in a game against my friends and then named my support ships "Weak Weedy Support Vessel Here". Upon entering the system i split the fleets into two to distract my enemy. My friend thought it was a trick and attacked the fleet of "Weak Weedy Support Ships" that to his dismay were ACTUALLY PDC/Supply ships, he thought i'd tried to trick him and they were my warships. It was a small loss when most his fleet were crippled by ramming and my fleet of actual warships (Uber powerful Ships Here ) Took the system pretty soon afterwards.

[ July 18, 2004, 16:03: Message edited by: Raging Deadstar ]

[Gryphin]

When I did play I tried using code that would remind me of the design. After a while I gave up.
Occasionaly I would rename LC and BC class ships as Gryphin and try to track thier actions and life span. Even that got to bee too much.
Just lazy I guess

Wouldn't be cool if you could tag a ship and tell the game to keep track if it's movment and combat?

[ July 18, 2004, 16:22: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[Intimidator]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
I've used all the methods you've mentioned. Thing is, I sometimes lose track anyway. With the pictures the same. the names really don't add much. Especially after multiple retrofits -- you really should rename with each retrofit, but I forget.

Not quite true:

I usualy call my ships : ' Blade Class-I Destroyer 0001 '
After construction I delete the 'class-I Destroyer' part in the name.

And then you will see this after clicking the ship :

Blade 0001
Blade Class-I Destroyer

so the only thing that will change in the name after retrofitting is the -I in -II or -III etc...

[Newborn]

hello all together!

all your comments are very interesting and especially the method of raging deadstar is worth trying ...
for myself i like to roleplay my race a bit so that every ship of one class relates to my races world. all my ships are can be called after geographical spots, cities, races, etc.
for example all my escort ships are called 'Thrithing'. in the progress of the game i add roman numbers I-X to the ships name or if needed a identification code like 'aa'.

i think it is not useful to choose a design name which reflects a description of the ships equipement such as DN Polaron V or LC Sweeper etc. this will tell the enemy too much about the tech level or the strenght of your fleet.

[Intimidator]

But don't forget Newborn, that you can also use it against your enemy.

I wanna see the face of my counterpart when his planet suddenly explodes and only an 'LC Sweeper' is present in the sector........

[Slick]

Without giving away my ultra secret naming system ( ), I do something like this:

AAAA BB CC.DD

Where:

AAAA is an acronym for my type of ship that is reasonably difficult to figure out.

BB is the hull size (BB, DN, etc). Obvious, yes, but helps in sorting ship lists.

CC is a number which is incremented each major upgrade. In other words, if I have enough resources, I'll retrofit all 01 ships to 02.

DD is a number which is for minor upgrades and/or retrofit series. I will not normally retrofit ships for minor improvements, but I do want to know if the designs are newer.

Putting all this together, some examples would be:

LRCS CS 01.00 = local rock colony ship

PMSY BB 00.01
PMSY BB 00.02 = Planetmaker with spaceyard (to repair the emergency propulsion) on a Battleship hull, Versions 1 and 2 in the retrofit series leading up to 01.00.

For multiplayer games, I use a similar system, but for obvious reasons, it's more difficult to figure out.

Slick.