Naming Ships

[Gandalph]

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.

[Antonin]

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.

[Atrocities]

There are CLASS names, ie the Design Names file, and then there are SHIP names.

[DavidG]

My favourite names are classics like "CLS 0001" and the unforgetable "DD 0002" Anything else is just too damn confusing. But then it is quite possible I'm easily confused.

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

[Krsqk]

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!

[Gryphin]

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

[sachmo]

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.

[CW]

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 ]

[Growltigga]

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

[Tenryu]

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.