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
- but there are some names which I tend to use more than others...
