Ship Naming Strategy: What do you do?

I usually use abreviations as "DD 1" stands for dreneign destroyer. And usually i have only 1 class per hull size my large ship might be DDL 2.
Not very creative but gets the job done.

I have 2 naming convetions.

Class name (ship design name) - This is usually random Mythical/legendary/cool sound class names. Ex. Excalibur for a warship and Corpurnicus for Science Vessels ect...
I also put in the description the date of fabrication and class

Ex.

Excalibur
Commisioned 2231. Ship of the Line


I don't go into any of the details of the ship (weapons or loadout since thats already done for you).

I only name individual ships when they have done something amazing or if they are the first in their class.

Example: The first Excalibur off the line gets named Excalibur, any ship over lvl5 gets a name (pilot name for fighters like LT. Hunter and the usual capitol names like Valiant).

When upgrading a named ship I put in a letter to show how many refits the ship has gone through.

Example: Excalibur class is being replaced by the Melborne. I upgrade Excalibur to this new class ship and call it Excalibur B.

I usually space my upgrades far apart, for instance just cause I just got Plasma II doesn't mean I'm going to refit all my ships to have that weapon type. I research ship upgrades until my structures are fully upgraded then I switch to Economic research while I pump out the latest ship designs. However if I need to make a slight upgrade to a class (either cause of a war or hindsight) I simply name the class a MK2 version.

Example.
Excalibur
6 beam attack, 4 missle defence, Impulse drive

I'm having trouble getting my ships to the hotspots quick enough so I upgrade to Warp Engines. It's not a big enough upgrade to warrent a whole new ship so the Excalibur becomes Excalibur MK2.

I never obsolete my ships or delete them if theres still ships left in the class. That way it's easy for me tell how many ships of that certain class by simply looking at the Shipyard.

I like to inject some humour into naming my ships, after all there's plenty of humour to be found in the game.


I personally choose names like "WhoopAss"1,2,3, etc. for med. sized attack ships, "ComeGetSome"1,2,3,4, etc. for defensive ships, and "Let'sDance"1,2, etc. for small fast attack ships, and the list goes on and on.

Just be creative!   

My theme is the (violent) weather:

Storm, Tempest, Blizzard, Thunder, Lightning, Tornado, etc.

I design 1-2 classes per ship size, and use roman numerals to represent tech upgrades (i.e., Tempest II) for weaps/speed.

Then for ships with defenses I append a "bd", "md", "pd" for beam, missile, particle defenses (i.e., Tempest II (MD)). That helps me sort things out.

I don't name individual ships, I just leave the computer to do that.

I use following naming convention:

Example:

HM Scorcher 3m

First Character:
- z: denotes a Hull only without any components. This way, the designs are all available once the hull tech is researched. (the Scorcher design has the name "zHM Scorcher") Using "z" puts the empoty hulls at the bottom of the list so I do not have to scroll down when selecting a ship to build.
- no z: this is a usable ship class (e.g. HM Scorcher 3m)

Second Character - Race Description:
H - Human
A - Altarian
T - Torian
Y -Yor
D - Drengin

Third Character - Hull Size
T - Tiny
S - Small
M - Medium
L - Large
H - Huge

Then there comes the design name (usually the hull name like "Scorcher" in our example)

Next is a number where higher numbers are more advanced ships

Last is a character describing the defense system of the ship. Usually I have one design per weapons tech (Scorchers bear beam weapons, btw) and there are different Scorchers with different defense systems, but all have beam weapons
m - missile defense
s - shields (beam defense)
a - armor (massdriver defense)
if a ship has more than one defense (doesnt happen often, it gets more characters here)

That way I can handle my ships quite easily.

Regards,
Stephan

For each race I've at least one name for each ship, they tends to be in the spirit of the race for exemple I often give the terran ships same name is there's in the navy (frigate, destroyer...) for Altarian I give knightly names (Templar, paladin, squire...) for dregin monsters names (Hydra, Behemot, Leviatan...) for Thalan insect names ect...

Each name is reported to a concept in my strategy and when I whant to make an other ship design with the same concept I often add MK(2,3,4...). If I upgrade my ships I keep thier actual name and remove all thier compoments at the end of a game it's less messy than having ten ships with the same hull with different equipement.

Boy am I boring.

D-Med-4m 2a 3spd lr = Drengin Medium sized ship with 4 missle, 2 armor, 3 speed, long range.

I usually uses a simple name for usual rank-and-file ships, based on designation (Corvette/frigate for medium, patrol/bomber for small, fighter for tiny) (like Corvette BM-1, BM-2, etc..). But for late game, large and huge ship, I give them a name.

In the last one, I had 2 end-of-game ships. the "Conqueror Cruiser-1", which I won the war against the altarian. (equipped with 15 beam attack, 10 mass driver attack, 12 shields and 6 armor, all BEFORE race adj.). (The galaxy used pretty much only shields and beams, but I fought the Drengin B4 who were the only ones with mass driver).

But after I won the war, I rushed my way to disruptor 1, and created "the" most powerful ship of the galaxy. "Doomsday Frigate". 30 Beam attack, 20 shields. Cheap and quick to build. After race adj, they were 55 beam attack, 35 shields. I could mass 7 of those beauty together. A fleet with 350 attack power..

My military graph went up skyrocketing (80 degree inclination). Not to say, I won with alliance victory (I rushed the alliances, no point continuing a winning game)

I tend to go with naming themes for planets. My current faction i've named Interstellar Pirate's Union and I've taken all the planet names from people, pirates, places and ships out of the index of a biography of Captian Kidd i'm reading. So I've got a gigantic galaxy with planets like Blackbeard, Antigua, Madagascar, Kidd, Shivers and the like.

For ship classes, I usually go with the name of my productive planets and a descriptor.. i.e. Riff Photon Boat for a med class ship equiped with photonic torpedoes (hooray for stealing technology!)

For individual ship names.. Mostly i just go with whatever i hear out of my left ear from my TV. I get odd things that way. IPU Federation, IPU Sisko, and IPU Mourn came from an ep of DS9. IPU Wolfe and IPU Congolomo came from an ep of Rocco's Modern Life. IPU Gooey came from a lame commercial while watching Rocco.

Got to go for the undead names to strike fear in to the CPU.

The Wraith, Vampire, Zombie (troop carrier, of course), Ghoul, Grim, Shade, and last but not least - the Reaper (normally a heavy hitting capital ship).

Since I play the game differently each time I have tried I have different layouts for the ships (weapons and armors all depend on what the CPU is trying to hit me with) which lead to the different MK versions.

Wraith MK 1 (light fighter with lasers)
Wraith MK 2 (light fighter with missiles)
...Etc

I for one use a convention to determine what 6 types of ships my ships fall into then name them accordingly after that. It is nearly a individual thing but of course, not quite.

For instance I use the weapon types I develop to note the class.

Sunfire - Lasers
Wrath - Mass Driver
Impact - Missile
Paladin - Shield Based
Merchant - Freighter
Explorer - Survey

Then after that I improve the classes and name them as I go:
Example:

Sunfire Class: Angle Fire

Then an upgrade later: Sunfire Class: Holy Strike (whatever)

This is only sort of efficient but I like to think an armada would behave a little like this and I thought it added some flavor the to game.

Cheers

Yeah, I just have a theme for the army, like Peregrine/Falcon/Commodore or Legionnaire/Centurion/Emperor or whatever. The Battleships all get individual names though. I don't have any suffixes since I always upgrade all ships of a class at the same time, so there is only only ever 1 kind of Falcon.

Example: The first Excalibur off the line gets named Excalibur, any ship over lvl5 gets a name (pilot name for fighters like LT. Hunter and the usual capitol names like Valiant).

hmmm, where do you look to see the ships level?

Cheers,
Reaver

Whoa! You all are complicated.  I call them depeding of what i can imagine in that moment (although i have some favourites):
-Tigran... Colonizer (when i need a moddified version of the basic one), Defender, Tigereye (big scout ship with looooong sensor range and very fast), Constructor (when i need to bother about faster constructors), Hunter, Fang, Stinger, Deathbringer, Lightsaber, Supertrooper (in honor to a transport with more than 35 of movement that can carry 3000 troopers, my craziest transport ever), Reaper...
-Altarian... Paladin (first ship ever with more defense than attack  ), Defender, Trooper and Stinger. (my first and only game with Altarians, played it today)

Yeah, my naming style sucks. I don't even give personal names to the ships.

hmmm, where do you look to see the ships level?

When you click a ship you can see it's level by either double clicking to get the description or look at the very top of the command window and you will see a little bar saying level.

You can also go to the sort ship/Planet and turn on the "Sort by Level", this allows me to pick my hero ships and keep them on the frontlines (the more battles a ship wins, the more HP it gets). I've had medium ships with nearly 40HP once just by keeping them on the frontlines constantly.

I just pick an arbitrary naming scheme and stick with it for the duration of that game. This applies to both ships and fleets, with all ships in a fleet having the same name but a Roman numeral after it. For example, I've done bees (ships Hornet I, Hornet II, Hornet III, Hornet IV, Hornet V going into a fleet named Hornet Swarm; ships Wasp I to Wasp V in Wasp Swarm; etc.). I've done birds (Hawk I to Hawk V in Hawk Fleet, Eagle I to Eagle V in Eagle Fleet, etc.). I've done elements (Fire I to Fire V in Flames, Ice I to Ice V in Blizzard, Wind I to Wind V in Tornado, etc; when two fires and three winds died, I left the same names but combined them and named the fleet Firestorm). You get the idea.

Usually, my tiny ships are given insect names, like "Wasp," "Gnat," "Mosquito," while small ships are given the names of birds; "Hawk," "Eagle," and so on. Medium ships, for reasons I cannot recall, are named after cards; ranging from the "Two of Hearts" to the "Ace of Spades." Large ships are named such things as "Brute," "Crusher," and various other vicious sounding names.  Huge ships are named for mythology; "Zeus," "Ra," and "Hercules" for instance. Except, that is, for the "ultimate" ship (containing black hole based weapons, the doom ray, the best armor researchable, and several of the top hyperwarp drives, ignoring it's price tag), which I decided to christen the "Sephiroth" from Final Fantasy. When upgrading a ship, I usually add "Mk II" "Mk II," and so on, though if the name is too long, I make it just the number.

Glad to see everyone's responses. I'm also glad I'm not the only who occasionally struggles through the Empire Builder's equivalent of writer's block trying to come up with names for his/her ships.

What are some of your favorite names? (Either for an individual ship or a series)


My favorites are:

Minotaur Dreadlord (massive build, end of the tree defenses but only disruptor power weapons)

Lord of Hades (massive build, end of the tree weapons and defenses)

Dogfish Killer (tiny build, end of tree defenses, 3x Hyperwarp MkIII, 1 phasor, transport killer)

Mine changes all the time. When I was watching Battlestar Galactica, I started naming my ships after ships in the show.

Then I started naming them after Stargate ships (X-301, X302,BC-303 Prometheus, Daedalus etc)

After a while I just start labeling them by weapon type and hull size

"M1" = Tiny Missile
"M2" = Small Missile
"M3" = Medium Missile
"M4" = Large Missile
"M5" = Huge Missile

B for Beam and D for Drivers

And when I do upgrades after a large tech boost I add a version number

M3-1, M3-2 etc

sometimes I'll add a name to the ship but I always use the designation, it keeps them in order in the build options, and I can easily tell which ship is which

M4-2 Aegis
M5-1 Tantalus

And so on

Greek myths for me, no labeling. I get to know my ships better that way.

for instance: small colony ship with Impulse drive mk III: Charon
VERY fast scout with good range: Mercury or Hermes
any big bad ship with lots of weapons: something that equates to 'devil'
advanced freighter: Poseidon

I may or may not start using designations like GTF- Galactic Terran Fighter, and same for cruiser, corvette, destroyer, and so on. naming system taken from Freespace. a lot of names themselves are based off Freespace. very cool game.

I may start using different mythologies, like Egyptian or something.

but yeah the ship designer is very cool, very intuitive as well- I like the use of attachment points.

#12 said

I don't have any suffixes since I always upgrade all ships of a class at the same time, so there is only only ever 1 kind of Falcon.

I tried this in a recent game (v1.2), and it didn't work out. When I began a new game, the class was no longer available, because the shipconfig file was at the last version.

For awhile I had a Norse myth thing going on but then I switched to

Scalpel (light fighter)
Reaver (heavy fighter)
Gauntlet (medium ship)
Brimstone (large ship)
Tyrant (massive ship)
Beserker (transport)
Harbinger (constructor)

I give them a "MK I" to start with and change the suffix as needed. For example a "Gauntlet MK III V.AT" would be a third generation med attack craft equipped for Attack(A) on the Terran's(T), and a "Brimstone MK I V.D" would be a a large ship equipped to defend a plant or system, but not suitable for long distance travel. This makes it very easy to keep track of you fleet with just a glance. But whatever you do I suggest making a base model of each ship with all of the extras and no techs, so you will have your customized hull style no matter how you develop you tech, game to game.

An example of mine would be
HF-201 Shuriken
The 2 letters stands for Ship class (heavy fighter in this case) and the numbers are [Hull size][generation]
I try to name my ships after weapons

First, I make the basic ship design using jewelry and when I'm pleased with it I come up with some name that fits the model of the ship, like 'Wasp' for a fighter or 'Goliath' for a huge-hull battleship. The initial design with no parts is called "Core (name here)", then I designate upgraded models of it using the mark system. So "Wasp MkII" is the second version of the design.

I name them something like 0-9-0 0-12-4 meaning it has 9 missile attack, 12 missile defense and 4 mass driver defense. I may throw in a few extra letters at the end if the ship is fast or has sensors etc.