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Posted by: obsidian_green
« on: September 10, 2017, 03:22:22 AM »

I'm on my first playthrough and thought I'd be restarting after major blunders, so my early ships were named from in-game lists, but things went too smoothly to quit. After I became invested, I started paying more attention to ship naming conventions and made the following choices.

Geo/Grav survey jumpships: the first astronaut to space of a given nationality. Yuri Gagarin currently the only class with four ships surviving out of six built. These are the only shipyard products I've lost so far. (Fighters are a different story.)

Superfreighters: world's longest rivers. Classes have been Yellow River, Volga, and Ayeyarwady; a Nile-class of three tankers also exists, but future tankers won't share that convention.

Salvage ships: historic scientists; Hippocrates currently the only class.

Commercial jump tenders have been named after Right Livelihood Award winners; military jump tenders have been named for notable revolutionaries, as were tugs, jump-gate constructors, ordnance ships, and fleet trainers (a ship to slow fuel consumption during task force training)---in a brief spout of building, this was the convention for many auxiliary ships.

Colony ships: historic architects of the Imhotep-class.

Asteroid miners: mountains by elevation, shared by Terraformer stations with "Station" appended.

Fuel harvester stations: lakes by area.

Troop transports have been named for world war gods, starting with Agurzil.

A pair of 12000t warships of the Troy-class that I reclassified as frigates used decisive battles and were superceded by a pair of the Salamis-class. Agamemnon led my first pair of "cruisers" (reclassified to destroyers before I scrapped them) named after famous military leaders.

My current 20000t destroyers are named for countries (by largest population) and new builds will share that convention. My carriers are named for continents (later oceans if I build more than seven) with the Africa-class of two currently in service. Reconnaissance frigates have been named for birds, with only Cormorant currently in service, to be replaced by factory-built sensor pods that park in hangars. I have a new class of 10000t frigates on the drawing board to provide extra PD to battle groups and a 40000t battlecruiser I can dispatch as a mini-carrier, but I haven't yet decided how I'll name them. War gods for the battlecruisers would appeal, but I've already established a tradition of using those names for troop ships that'll stick with; resumption of famous military leaders seems likely (but I really wish I'd used that for the troop ships).

I'll be switching up my naming conventions if I ever start a new game because one of the things I sometimes did while waiting for auto-turns was scout out new or more comprehensive lists. I also have a better idea of which types of ships eat up names faster and should be matched with longer lists.
Posted by: 83athom
« on: August 30, 2017, 05:17:18 PM »

If we are talking class names;
I name my first to third generation of ships after my Empire theme. Then I start naming classes, that aren't just directly upgrading a previous class, after fallen notable officers and in-game locations of significant battles. Classes that are just upgrades (copies with new tech) just get a Roman Numeral after them, while variant offshoots get a designation B (secondary battle variant), E (electronic warefare), etc.
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: August 30, 2017, 04:59:00 PM »

Naming Covfefentions
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: July 07, 2017, 12:34:13 AM »

So this thread is a year old and I've posted here a few times... I only just noticed the misspelling of the word 'Conventions'.
Posted by: Caveman31
« on: June 19, 2017, 06:49:40 AM »

My current favorite that I use

Missile Cruisers; class name: Jovian, Theme: names of Saturn's moons
Posted by: HighTemplar
« on: May 23, 2017, 07:08:16 PM »

For all HMS then
Battlecarriers: British Dukes
Carriers: Citys
Battleships: Battles
Monitors: Fantasy Creatures
Battlecrusiers: a metal followed by the word knuckle (i. e.  HMS Iron Knuckle, HMS Gold Knuckle etc)
Escort Carriers: US Presidents (and winners of the popular vote)
System Defence Crusiers: English Counties
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: July 30, 2016, 05:27:26 PM »

I use the naming lists quite a bit but it all depends on the game/nation/RP in question.
Posted by: GodEmperor
« on: July 01, 2016, 03:55:46 PM »

What are your typical naming conventions for your ships?

So far I only have destroyers and logistics ships  and name one after famous people and the other after Sol moons.

For cruisers I plan to use cities and for dreanoughts/supercarriers I plan to use countries.

Not sure what I will use for the in-between of cruisers and dreadnoughts which are battleships and carriers or the appropriate names for frigates  and corvettes. Perhaps there is no reason for these tiers...


I use (or rather plan on using) the US air force naming convention for naming fighters, so my first generation fighter is f-1 (something cool here), the first bomber is b-1, etc,etc. (see here under air force: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks)

For classes i usually use anything random from the names lists, anything that "feels" good like Hippy name list for terraformers and colony ships. But it really depends on the theme im running.

And for specific ships ( again mostly depends on the theme but for a default "United Earth 2050 start" it goes like this ) :

Survey ships : famous scientists and explorers ( Leonov, Korolev, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Tycho etc ), Earth spacecrafts, probes ( Gemini, Voyager, Soyuz etc ) and names related to exploration like Pathfinder, Intrepid and Discovery.

Frigates and Destroyers ( or their equivalent - small early glass cannons kind, later simple cheap system defense ships ) : Weapons, animals, effects ( like Thunder, Typhoon etc )

Cruisers ( medium sized all around ships ) : places ( Aquitaine, London, Sparta ), adjectives ( Defiant, Fearless, Unbreakable ) and stuff like Rampart, Repulse.

Battleships, Dreadnoughts, Monitors ( big capitals ) : Battles ( Marathon, Wizna, San Jacinto ), famous people ( Saladin, Roosevelt, Patton ) and intimidating names like Behemoth, Leviathan, Sathanas.

Carriers : famous women ( Cleopatra, Olympias, Boudica ), "caring names" like Vanguard, Sentinel or Defender.

Colliers, Repair ships and Tankers : whatever i feel like it :P

Other civies : i use different name lists, mostly periodic table, aboriginals, Salish etc, sometimes i make my own like Northstar, Astral Queen or Big Momma.
Posted by: boggo2300
« on: June 30, 2016, 04:32:12 PM »

That heavy metal list is pretty cute but most of the bands are hard rock and not heavy metal ;)

you must be young
Posted by: Erik L
« on: June 30, 2016, 09:01:37 AM »

MMMmmmm E Nomine. With a chaser of Blind Guardian.
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: June 30, 2016, 07:21:42 AM »

The drumming's a start but there's tonnes of metal, even new, that uses actual vocals and not screams or growls.
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: June 30, 2016, 07:16:55 AM »

Yeah I grabbed them from a list, I don't know most of them, but picked names that sound metal :p
Though back in the 70's hard rock was considered extreme, now you need ultra low pitch gutteral growling and machine gun drumming.
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: June 30, 2016, 03:35:42 AM »

That heavy metal list is pretty cute but most of the bands are hard rock and not heavy metal ;)
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: June 30, 2016, 01:04:38 AM »

My games are heavily themed so it's generally easy for me to find appropriate names.
For instance my current star fleet game has of course the enterprise, other ships in the class will be named after the rest of the space shuttles; Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.  All were named after classical sailing ships. (Atlantis was built in 1930 but still had sails and conducted scientific research).
My commercial freighters are named after the Zodiac, I had originally intended on naming them after the early US space programs, but after Apollo I ran out of good named and decided to just keep Gemini but rename Ship 1 to Aries and Ship 3 cancer. I'll have another 9 names available and then if need be I can use other constellations. As a coincidence, NASA had planned to replace the shuttle with the Aries program so the name sort of was fitting.
Of course I'll be using Star Trek names further along the game, but mostly I'll be using names that fit the theme of exploration, science, and visionaries. Not for warships though.
When I get around to fuel harvesters I'll probably use my old hydrocarbon theme.
I don't seem to have posted my name sets in the correct thread, but these are names I've been using:
Lists I've created so far.
Hydrocarbons 60 Names; For tankers
Science Fiction Authors 55 names; For explorers, survey or colony ships.
Nobel Laureates for physics 198 names- chronological order ; I'm using for Grav survey ships
Heavy Metal 52 Metal Bands mostly from the 70's, Alphabetical order and 2 of each letter; Freighters or Warships
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: June 29, 2016, 08:38:31 PM »

Most of my Orions are named after either my colonies or the Sky Marshal. So, of the four that I have, they are the TADL Von Brandstetter, the TADL Troy, the TADL Mars, with the TADL Guardian being the only one outside of that convention.

For my dime-a-dozen line ships that're generic but still too big to just be called "Fenris 022" or "Fenris 069" I just use one of the name lists.