Do you name your ships?

[TrashMan]

"Captn! The SFS Over is going under!"
"What? The Under is on the other flank. What the hell is Over doing there?"
"No Sir, the Over is not on Unders position."
"I know it's not under position you dolt! Get the Between to come in front of Over and the Behind to get between Under and the enemy."
"But if the In Front moves between Behind our left flank will be left open!"
"Then move Parallel to the Left Flank for support."
...

[kjn]

"It doesn't help! We need to send in Out!"

[Felis Concolor]

I try to keep some semblance of consistency towards specific ship types, such as:

Ray Gun
Ray Beam
Ray of Lights
Sting Ray
Ray Charles
Point Ray
Man Ray
Raybestos
Spray Ray
Raymond
Raybies
Blue Ray
Fey Ray

Drone carrying ships belong to the Say Hello class, as they're equipped with lots of Little Friend series autonomous vehicles.

Biowar DNs invariably receive the Hallmark designation.

As Morrigi, my colony trap ship is renamed FU, while the gravity trap gets the FU2 classification. Grav boats earn the Faster!/Faster, Damn You!/Faster, Damn Your Eyes! naming convention.

Liir colonizer DEs are named Splashdown, while biome CRs earn the Big Water title: watch Watership Down for the appropriate pronunciation of the latter. ER DEs tend to become Eels, while Moray is reserved for the more heavily armed ER CRs.

Per the information graphic, Hiver colony ships are named Auger, as that's what they do.

[Azrael Ultima]

I tend to restrict specific names to high-end, purpose built ships(think Flagship) or general fooling around.

A Disco Ball class CR is probably not going to do a whole lot of damage, but it has many pretty lights.
If you see a Macross MM DN, you might want to invest into PD. Lots.

[linkxsc]

I only name things taht are special like Flagships and specific fleet Armada CNCs (I tend to use Morrigi, and their DNs are kindof lacking in general combat)

[Cailean]

I only name things taht are special like Flagships and specific fleet Armada CNCs (I tend to use Morrigi, and their DNs are kindof lacking in general combat)

I'm sorry...he said what now?

[RELee]

I only name things taht are special like Flagships and specific fleet Armada CNCs (I tend to use Morrigi, and their DNs are kindof lacking in general combat)

I'm sorry...he said what now?

I thought he said he's lazy and doesn't know how to construct warships. But I could be mistaken.

Just goofing, y'all.

[Thanaeon]

Yes, I practically always name my ship classes. I mostly play humans. My mainline combatant ships tend to be named after warrior types or famous warriors (Chevalier, Berserker, Ares, Cataphract etc.), my command ships after famous military commanders (Perry, Alexander, Napoleon...), tankers after rivers and such (Nile, Amazon, Oasis...), repair ships after industrial cities or urban sprawls (Hamburg, Ruhr, etc.) and my coloniser ships often get named after Columbus' ships - Santa Maria is my go-to coloniser class name. However, I do break my habits from time to time and name ship classes after famous people - fictional or otherwise - and especially in the antimatter era tend to start giving more abstract names - Determination, Valiant, Humanity, Juggernaut, Nova. I also tend to name my space station types after cities - historical or otherwise - that resonate with the type of station in question. Thus, the trade stations often get named Rome or Rotterdam or the like, while the command station may get called Pentagon (okay, not precisely a city, but close enough) and so on.

I tend to keep to a single class designation for the relatively static designs like tankers, colonisers, freighters and the like and just let them get the Mark X typifier at the end. On the other hand, I always rename my combatant classes when I switch to a new engine configuration so there's no mistakes to be made and I don't accidentally weigh down my new fleets with slow, obsolete ships. Likewise, a new name is called for when I change an existing design enough - say, if I change from ballistic weapons to beam armaments, that calls for a renaming.

[handsome pete]

One of my tanker classes is called the Dromedary.

[Gwenio]

I have only really played Morrigi, and I give their ships bird related names (mostly).

The most used are:
CR Assault/Barrage = Phoenix
CR AI Command (or Fire Control)/Impactor = Condor

[Wraith]

Was looking through some of my old game saves just now, since I actually feel that I'll have time to play again, and I came across one of my favorite ship name/design pairs.

It was a Tarka game in which a massive AI rebellion had taken root on the other side of the Galactic Rift, and things had turned into an immensely gratifying and entertaining war to crush them. The rebellion had started as Liir, and also included Morrigi elements, and tended to favor high-end energy weapons. Things were tough, since of course they had more tech available, and thus better armor then I did, and so forth.

Then I pulled Energy Absorbers and Antimatter Projectors.

Thus was the birth of the Corona-class Dreadnought, which would melt enemy DNs like butter in an inferno of antimatter if they dared to fire on it. Good times...

[Mugabi]

I dont name destroyers, except for the war destroyer, wich gets the Heavy Destroyer designation.
CRs:

BB + Armor: Cruiser
Assault + Barrage: Battlecruiser
Assault + Blazer: Warcruiser
BB + War: Heavy Cruiser
AI + Impactor: GungHo

Then with the rest of the CRs: Mobile Miner, Mobile Refinery, Heavy Colonizer, except for the CNC wich remains the same. The only cruiser I cant find a suitable name is for the Projector...

As for DNs, most of the time they keep the names given by default, except for the CNCs. Flagship gets Enterprise Class, Assault + CNC gets Excelsior Class and Electronic Warfare + CNC gets Prowler Class.

[BlueTemplar]

I'm going to name my next raider ship "Bernanke". (He's going to DESTROY your economy!)

[Setokaiva]

depends on my race, generally, and my mood at the time. I tend to give simple names I use all the time, like...

Repair & Salvage -- Custodian
Heavy Beam DN -- Soverign
Flagship CNC -- (Insert name of empire here) One (Ex. Argon One)
Light Defense Platform -- Sentinel
Medium Defense Platform -- Warden
Torpedo Defense Platform -- Defender
Heavy Defense Platform -- Guardian
Heavy Torpedo Defense Platform -- Bastion
Spinal Mount DE -- Caliburn
Biome Colonizer -- Migrator
Bio War DE -- Despoiler
Bio War CR -- Defiler
Bio War DN -- Desolator
Missile exclusive CR -- Dirkstorm (I admit I took the name from that one guy's 'Hungry Children' LP as Tarka)

[DaNuker]

I have this semi-lazy way to label my ships in some games due to a partial quirk in the fleet manager.

When you double click near the list of ships in the fleet, it automatically sorts them alphabetically in ascending order. This sometimes happens when I'm trying to drag and drop ships, messing up my carefully placed reinforcement list.

To work around this though, in SP, I just label most of the brawler class ships with letters starting from A, and then other ship classes in between, just generic names like "Alpha", "Atlas", etc. Non combat ships like tankers and CnC ships get the last few letters of the alphabet, "Warlord", "Zulu", "Yeomen".

Thus ships will still be in rough order of reinforcement and I just need to drag and shift a few other non-brawler combat ships up the list. Also useful when I merge two fleets together and want them to get almost instant sorted.

Don't do this in multiplayer though.