Do any of you actually name your ships?

[Dracus]

I name them once they complete a tour of duty.

[Suicide Junkie]

I merged a bunch of name files that somebody posted a while back, and I just skim that for names as each ship gets built.

I usually keep a small empire, with less than ten, (avg. 7) full-time, big & tough defence ships, and a small fleet in mothballs.

EG. in my Story game, I've got 6 "Ubernaught" BCs, and one operational "Blackhole" DN. All are named.

[Trachmyr]

No, but I've gotteninto the habit of using similar ship designs and always using the same name for each design. However I use a large number of classes, so a fleet will have a Command ship, several Attack Ships, a few Planatary Assault Ships, a Troop Transport or 2, a couple of Carriers, a few Tanker Ships, several Point-Defense Ships, and a couple of Fast-Attack Ships... each class will have a diffrent name, so you're talking about 8 classes/names in my standard attack fleet. It would be too hard to name/remember all my ships, since I often build a lot of smaller ships... a standard attack fleet has 21, a defense fleet has 13, and a patrol fleet has 7... I easily hit upwards of 100 ships by mid-game!

[Will]

For my big games, I usually will have after a short time three kinds of ships (sometimes four): All-purpose Attack/Defense ship, All-purpose Transport ship, Carrier, and (sometimes) Point-Defense ship. I'll just use normal SEIV naming conventions (ie Ship XII 0042, meaning it's the 12th revision on the basic design, and the 42nd ship constructed on that design).

For more "intimate" games, like SJ plays, I name my ships. My most recent one was playing with his P&N mod, I had at the end, 5 BBs (Victory, Privateer, Protector, Bucaneer, Thief), 3 DSs (Skull, Crossbones, Eyes), 2 LCs (Eliminator, Vengance), 1 CR (Refueler), 1 DN (Miner), 4 SS (Shredder 1 through 4), 1 BS (Shredder 5), and I at various points used captured enemy DNs in battle before analyzing/scrapping them, they were temporarily named "Bounty X", with X being whichever number it was in order. There were fifteen, I believe. The BBs were all of the same general design, heavy shielding, PPB Vs, a few PDLasers. Victory had a small SY, and reached 50% experience, Privateer reached 35%. Skull and Crossbones are twins, moderate shielding, HBM V, SD V, PPB V, BP V. Eyes had SD V, 3x PPB V, and HyperOptics III. Eliminator was a better shielded Skull/Crossbones. Vengance was a heavily shielded delivery vehicle for a Plague Bomb V. Refueler was all engines, supply storage, and solar collectors. Miner was a captured DN retrofitted to do mining work on asteroids. Shredders 1 thru 5 were mining bases.

For you to think, "I'm sending Victory into battle against three enemy DNs," it is so much more fun than "I'm sending BLaster XV 0174 into battle against three enemy DNs." But it's really impossible to do that for larger games except for special cases (ie, ships that have reached Legendary). Makes for good story writing in small games too

[CaptSpoogy]

I always name ALL of my ships - from little escorts to bulky transports - every one of them has a name.

I could never live them just numbered.

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[Atrocities]

yes

[Possum]

Yes, each class will all have names starting with the same letter, that way I can sort by name, and in the process sort by class