How do you handle Ship naming? (w.r.t. retrofitting)

every time i upgrade a shiplayout with new weapons or something like that, the game automaticly changes the class-name off the ship from scout to scout II or from colony ship IV to colony ship V.
so i can see what upodate the ship got.

I would name the ships according to the USN classification (Knox class, OHP class) I know it's time consuming but i like that the ships are being named closest to the real life (and that retrofit bug for me don't exist anymore)

I tend to use Mk in ship names.

Scout Mk I, when upgraded, becomes Scout Mk II (it won't name it Scout Mk I II)

Anyways, I totally understand the problem...

Scout Mk I 0001 starts off as a Scout Mk I.
Somewhere along the line, there have been a few upgrades, and Scout 0001 is asctually a Scout Mk IV design, but the ship 'name' is still Scout Mk I 0001.

It's annoying when, after a few dozen turns of research, it comes time to refit dozens of ships, because of having to edit the name of each ship to update it, which generates more problems when you have a Scout Mk I 0006 that has been upgraded to Scout Mk III, when there is already a newer ship named Scout Mk III 0006...

Perhaps what is needed is an additional designation, like based on ship size, not ship type.

E.g., a frigate gets a tag of FF, and so, each ship of Frigate size gets FF before the number, and the number becomes the # of ship size built.
First Frigate is a Scout Mk I, is named Scout Mk I FF 0001
Second Frigate is a Scout Mk I also, and is named Scout Mk I FF 0002
Third Frigate is a Gunship Mk I and is named Gunship Mk I FF 0003
Fourth Frigate is a Patrol Mk I and is named Patrol Mk I FF 0004.

For the ID letters, Frigate is FF as above, Destroyer is DD, Light Cruiser is CL, Cruiser is CC, (if present due to a mod, Heavy Cruiser would be CH, a Battle Cruiser a BC) Battleship is BB, Dreadnaught is DN (oddly enough, Dreadnoughts were originally smaller than Battleships in naval history iirc), Baseship is... um... something not mistakenly offensive (MB for 'mobile base'?), Carriers are CV (light is CVL, heavy is CVX) Freighters are a F (or T) with an L, M or H in front (Light, Medium, Heavy), Space Station is SS, Starbase is SB, etc.

Another thing would be to have a 'flag' for the ship name, so the game knows if it is the default ship name (such as Scout Mk I 0001), or if the player has renamed it to something else (like... USS We're Lost - NCC 404), or if the player wants to default back to the default name (stored in ships ID info, which could possibly still be displayed next to the 'new' name in the ship list or in the report).

I have also wondered this, specially since I tend to make plenty of models (Baracuda XXI comes in mind).

Maybe adding a button to the sub menu that has the upgrade option. Pressing that button would update the ship name to match the current class, and gives first free number (I think those numbers are up somewhere, or maybe it would have to check it but it can't take that much time.

Another things I was hoping would be separate Shipname file you could use.

Make X names in it, and maybe type designations. Is could be enabled from the empire options. This way, whenever you build a new ship, it would have it's classname as defined, but would get an individual name for the ship. It's not really a important feature, but would add a bit to game, making ships more personal.

The way I do it...

I use standard USN classifications (DD=Destroyer, DDG=Destoryer with missles, CL=Light Cruser, CLG=Light Cruiser with missils, CVL=carrier; light, etc...) add a roman numeral one (I) to the first of the class...used to use real names but as mentioned I had to look a my ships to be sure of their upgrade level...quite the pain.

What I do...rename the ship to the new Class and change the serial number so I know what I upgraded from (e.g. DD I 00001 becomes DD II 10001; or CLG II 00010 becomes CLG IV 20010). I build/savage/upgrage too often to really track upgrades by name...

He's not talking about class designations.
He's talking about the actual ship name, which it assigns when you build the ship and you can rename to whatever the hell you want.
Answer.... currently only the hard way exists.

Nevyn...the gist was that we've changed our "Ship Name" to mirror the "Class Name", with tweaks we add in for our own purposes. And I agree the only the manual way exists.

I cannot stand the default method the system uses to update class types using roman numerals. I prefer to use letters, and then perhaps a further designation of a number for small increases.

For some races I use new ship designations, such as:

D-1
D-2
D-3
D-4, D-4A, D-4B

For Klingon D-class hulls.

One idea that worked well was to use the letters 'Mk.' (for the British military term of 'Mark' to designate a new class)

So doing troops for example, I might build one called

AFV Mk. as the first (looks weird for the first one)

but then every new version will get a roman number designation,

AFV Mk. II
AFV Mk. III
AFV Mk. IV

ect....

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Once a ship has been built, I immediately take the "version" out of the name (e.g. remove the I, II, etc). That way I rarely have to mess with the name again. Exceptions are when I retrofit to a totally different type of design. As an example the name for a Capital Ship Missile destroyer is "CSM (DS) xxxx" and for a Phased-Poleron Beam destroyer is "PPB (DS) xxxx". I use convention so that I know the major weapon type from the ship name. Obviously I need to go through the whole renaming thing if I retrofit it from a CSM to PPB. This works well if you don't mix a bunch of different *major* weapons systems (e.g. I'm not talking about things like point-defense) - I generally don't do that since "optimal firing range" is not the same for all weapons.

I do it this way
scout I 0001 is now a scout II class it's new name is scout I 2001
scout I 0002 is now a scout III class it's new name is scout I 3001

so note that the scout class is the first number in the thousands place

example
scout II 0001 is now a scout IV class it's new name is scout II 4001
later
scout II 4001 is now a scout VI class it's new name is scout II 6001

usually there are no naming conflicts this way.

I go about it the hard way, with a twist. It does help to remember that the clipboard should work, and that you can move your cursor much faster by holding down CTRL... I look up the latest free number, and copy something like "Intrepid F 00" in the clipboard and only have to add the remaining numbers.

It would be nice to be able to toggle off the Roman numeral sequencing, as I prefer to use letters. (Or adding the option to customize the way design names are sequenced would be even better).

I would also have liked a ship names list, as coming up with hundreds of names for individual ships is something I can do without.

The game does recognize I as a roman numeral, and so will 'count' it when you upgrade a ship with an I at the end.
E.g., you can make an AFV Mk. I, and when you upgrade it, it will become AFV Mk. II.

I do it all the time, although I use "Mk" instead of "Mk.".
I also sometimes just make the orginal with no Mk, such as a troop called MBT, and with the first upgrade change it to MBT Mk II.

To keep from having more than one ship with the same number, I just use the 100s or 1000s digits. A ship named "Bear VII 0301" would be an upgraded ship, because I obviously haven't built 300 Mk VII Bears.

I use a similar method to the ones described above so my ship

Cruiser VII 0003

when I retrofit it to model 18 gets renamed manually to

Cruiser R18 VII 0003

so the R designates that it has been retrofitted.

One other thing I do is to rename some of the ships that are currently important to bring them to the top of the ships list, so if I have a repair ship en route to a waypoint to do some emergency repairs I'll change the name from Repair MFr 0001 to A Repair MFr 0001 - at the moment I have 6 or 7 Dreadnoughts that have all been prefixed with an A so that they are the first that get dealt with after a turn.

That's like my procedure for gifting. I always tack "ag" (a gift) on the front to bring them to the top of the alphabetical list. This also reminds me not to move the ships inappropriately while waiting for the transfer to take place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnaught

On the subject of renaming, though, I usually either just manually rename it to the new class and use the first free serial number (and it would be nice if you could have it do this automatically), or add either an 'R' for refit or 'UG' for upgrade at the end.

Though it would be nice to be able to customize the naming system more if one desired, and to have extra parts that one could use if one wanted to (but that you weren't required to use).

Cool, thanks for the info and the link.

It gives me an impression as to why 'Dreadnoughts' are often portrayed as smaller/earlier versions of 'Battleships' in some of the assorted games I have, such as Star Trek Star Fleet Command.

Now if I can only figure out how 'Frigate' went from being an effective Ship of the Line in the Age of Sail to being a puny little things they are treated as in assorted different settings.

Now all SE V needs is a Manowar, as portrayed in some pirate games, as in the 'dwarfs everything else around' type of ship that is bigger than all other 'Ships of the Line'.

Easy, because most SF settings use bastardized modern naval parlance for ship designations, not bastardized Age of Sail parlance. That would be one reason, the other being that Frigates weren't Ships of the Line (well, the original American Frigates were the equal of a 4th-rate ship of the line in a fight). They were probably as important as Ships of the Line, but less powerful and not meant for fleet combat. Later on, though, they were the most powerful ships -- but not until the Age of Sail was over, and they started giving them iron armor and steam power.

I think their role in the Age of Sail was more like Destroyers and Cruisers would be considered today, but now we can build bigger ships that fill those roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigate