Post
by Thanaeon » Thu Feb 17, 2011 2:57 pm
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.
