Per class (or group of class) naming

[serger]

Alien ship classes can be displayed by the phonetic alphabet tables, as it was in NATO naval practice ("Alpha class", "Bravo class", ... - list ordered by the time of first contact with this class).
That's easy, RP-cool, handy to memorize, and doesn't tell you any unnecessary information about alien designs.
More of that, this table can be selected from the list (NATO/ITU-R RTPA, Greek PA, Hebrew PA, LAPD PA), or even written by player himself.

Another solution is to use first names from officer names table, filtered by the main name scheme of that empire.
It will give more length, so when you contact more classes of that empire, than there are words in this phonetic alphabet - there will be less need with names list to use suffixes (like "Alpha-2" or "Alpha II" classes - those can be misunderstood by new players as succeed classes or blocks of one class).
But it can be less handy, because there are some very similar or even duplicated names in those name lists.

I'd like to see first variant (RTPA list) - smth like "Klingon Alpha class" ... "Klingon Victor class" ... "Klingon Alpha-2 class" ... - but only if it will be some personalization possibility.
If it will be hardcoded algorithm - than I'd prefer last variant (officer first names list of empire scheme).

[Father Tim]

Currently, Aurora randomly selects a theme for an NPR, then randomly selects a(n associated) theme for a class, then procedurally selects a ship name from that class.

Then, when you encounter said NPR, Aurora again randomly selects a theme by which to report it to you, randomly selecting a(n associated) theme for reporting the class, and appending an ordinal number for the unit.  It also gives you an option to just use the names the NPR is using.

So your complaint is that the randomly selected name & class that the (usually alien) NPR is using makes no sense by your empire's rules, but because it's called the 'real name' you feel unable to ignore it.

I'm pretty sure the Tac Intel window allows you to rename your reporting names for other empires/ships/classes (though I'm not going to fire up Aurora just to check).  I advise you to turn off 'use real names for alien ships (if known)' and pretend that option doesn't exist.

If what your asking for is a way to 'push' player-designated names onto NPR ship/class designs, I would advise against it because that seems to me to be begging for an endless supply of bugs from accidentally including an apostrophe or ampersand or other special character in a field that does not get properly sterilized.

Sloanjh has the right idea.  Even better, I think his "Change reporting name" button already exists, albeit by a different name, on the Tac Intel and/or Diplomacy windows