Ship Class Names

[Emperor Zog]

I am just curious what some folks plan on naming their ships.


My Colonizers are going to be Space Trailers
Electronic Warfare will be Shrieking Children
Cloakers Silent Wind of Doom
Dreadnaughts "Musta Pissed Zog off"

[apoc527]

Well, against the Hivers, mostly stuff with "Raid" in the name...

Seriously though, I'll either name stuff using nice little prefixes like CA (for heavy cruiser) or BB for battleship, etc depending on the function of the ship or since all ships are either DDs, CR, and DN's, I'll just pick fanciful names that potentially have meaning to me.

Really, I'm not sure yet. If it becomes too difficult to keep my classes straight, I'll imagine I'll switch to fanciful names that have a secondary meaning for me. In other words, all ships with "bow" in them might be close range energy ships (to throw off other players in MP who will assume "-bow" ships are missile heavy) and all ships with "sword" in their name might be stand-off missile ships. Of course, now that I've said that here I can't use that, so who knows. Maybe I"ll just use whatever sounds cool.

[Emperor Zog]

Well for faking them out I imagine it would be good to swap ship names now and then. Or name a bunch of ship types the same thing. Burping Weasel ships would be close range fixated in one set of battles, Long range Missle launching oriented in others.

[Tarhalindur]

I don't keep a set naming strategy - that way, you can't predict what a given ship class will be - but there are some names which I tend to use more than others...

Seeker
Seer
Explorer
Phoenix
Agamemnon
Eridani
Tau Ceti
Iridium
Ithaca
Epsilon
Hercules
Caesar
Enterprise
Galactica
Vanguard
Intrepid
Aurora
Ranger
Anteanus
Orion
Prometheus
Daedalus
Herald of Doom
Prime Radiant
Waylander
Warrior Upon Stars
Gloriously Bright

Or, when I'm feeling a bit... alien...
Va'il
Tiraeu
Allaik
Alimnis
Ai'berlimyinor
Talona
Thraan'daali
Daali'nar

And last, but not least...
Tarhalindur

[The Magus]

I remember I had two methods of going about it in MOO3, aside from just making up cool names One idea I got off of a site, and as the Meklar I had my design names down to a very specific format that gave every bit of information about the class on sight. 100% functional, 0% aesthetic, 110% flavorful With Klackons I fairly cheaply named the ships after somewhat approrpiate insects. On a similar note, when ever I had a Corporate government on my human empire, I had different series of ships produced by different corporations, and each corporation had a slightly different way of naming their ships, always working in their corporate name on the model

With SotS I think I'll combine the functional model with an even more aethetic one this time in my human fleets, and I've been thinking about using Constellation names fitting to the ship followed by some brief technical abbreviations, like the D-2/LR Grus, for like drive level-2 Long Range (well, once I'm more familiar with the ship design system that part will be alot better) The corniest use of which, would be having a destroyer design called Ursa Minor and a big brother Dreadnaught version called Ursa Major if I pick up Hivers though I'll probably aim for something more original than just insect names, something ore aesthetic to the same kind of mindset that can call their race "the Children". If I take up Tarka, the ships might be named after fan-fictional Tarka warriors...though the weapon name idea, Apoc, may be suiting to go along with these Tarka names

[JeffHCross]

Since I'll be playing as Humans the majority of the time, I'll be using mostly US Navy or Star Wars naming schemes.

[The Writer2]

Single-play, I'll use ancient names for my ships. A "Hoplolite-class" cruiser would be a forward-attacking, aggressively armed vessel, designed to smash the enemy. A "Hopolis-class" destroyer, however, will have heavy point-defense, acting as a shield.

A drednaught designed for long-range carnage-dealing will be called a "Crete-class Dreadnaught." (After the expert archers of Crete.)

My most well-armed ships for close-range combat will be called "Preatorian-class" ships, or "Legionnaire-class" ships. (After Roman soldier ranks)

Thus, command ships are called "Centurion-class," and so on.

As for multi-play, assuming I ever play it, it will involve me naming my ships as crazily yet logically as the Kerberos guys do. Something like my "Golden-Delicious-Apple-class" cruiser might have a sweet, suculant, spinal-mount that just so happens to give off a golden hue when spewing its leathal wrath.

[Kharkov]

Going greek? I'd name my uberdread the Salamis... running up against a Thermopylae would probably be a costly victory, but a victory nonetheless. Salamis, however, has that special "Now You Die" aspect, not to mention making people hungry.

However, I'm probably going to end up Shakespearian for my ships. Fools for jammers (Touchstone, Lanceolot, Porter...), soldiers for my destroyers, kings for my command ships, peasants/merchants for my refineries/scouts, (note: if you see a Shylock-class refinery, I've probably placed some weaponry aboard.) nobility for the cruisers, assassins for my stealthed (Claudius, Cassius...) and main characters for my dreads. Male=drivers. Female=lasers.

If you run into a Prospero-class, you need know only three things. One, that there's a command section on it. Two, that it will be traveling with a few Ariel-class energy cruisers, one configured for point defense.

A Brutus-class is going to be designed to fight other dreads, high damage, low accuracy, all the way.

If a zergish strategy is unleashed, I may break out a Macbeth. Killer of the little ships... yeah, I put too much thought into this.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Remember that your ship composition will vary from game to game based on what techs you can get. It's not all plannable.

[Emperor Zog]

My ships are always named one of three ways. A ship I won't build often, I make it something to stand out so it jumps out at me when I need one. The rest I just generally go with names that sound either powerful, or funny. Depends on the mood I am in.


Like mood rings, only interstellar with energy weapons. If I designed that ship during some serious thinking on long range strategy, the name will reflect that mood. If in a more relaxed "I have no worries, everything is going as planned" mood, it would be something like Raging Waffle Flinger.

[Steve]

I haven't thought about it but I think dreadnought will probably be known as "The Massive."

[Peanut Gallery]

My Hiver ships will be notorious for their Translation Problems because of the subtle facets of the Hiver language that can't be translated.

Mother's Affection/Princess of Glory/Purple Eggplant. Invisible Hand/Divine is All/My name is none of your business.[/img]

[OF-pathfinder]

dunno....


Path
Path Losted
Path Founded Again
Oops Losted
Ahm Losted

[rasorow]

I will probably use historical naval vessels and mythological elements....

Artemis
Apollo
Pheonix
Victory
Constitution
Old Ironsides
Wasp
Lexington
King George V
Bismark
Monitor
Turtle
(etc)


One thing to remember is that your opponent can tell what your ship has by visual. (We had those profiles from the desktop where we guessed what they were.) So you might as well have fun with names instead of worry about your opponent figuring them out.

Like the Greek theme Writer.

Rasorow

[Agent]

I probably will not be creative, to the point where I start putting MK. V etc. after my ship names.

CMDDRED MK. II
LASDES
MSLCRUISE

Mayby if i hit the top of the tech tree, I could start nameing them things like:

USS TOMFULP
RBT ROBOT
T3H PWN

Morale will be at an all time low in this fleet...