Maybe some naming conventions should be defined now. As we already have the good old Imperial/Spiritual/Industrial faction triangle, those tend to have naming conventions with them.
Obviously, the Spiritual tend to have religion/mythology evocative names, like the aforementioned Harbinger or Arbiter. Other examples are Templar, Archangel, Oblivion, Martyr (for a non-armed, kamikaze chameleon ship - can you guess it was out right before 2001?) Warning : TvTropes link detected - proceed with extreme caution
This convention would probably be good as it is for the Centauran.
The Imperial tend to have ācool-sounding namesā, or historical names ; often inspired to US or European naming conventions. Typhoon (from the previous topic) is one of them, but you have (developerās team names/nicknames) Mavor, Novak, Flamberge, Rapier, Dragon, Wraith, Vultureā¦
This is actually the freest one, and would go fine with the Deltan - as actually quite often, those are the closest ones of western democracies (with a few twists, like the massive power of the Army).
Finally, we have the Industrial. Those often feel like they gave the first name they thought about that sounded good, without much fanciness - similar to how they design things. For example, Hunter, Brawler, Sniper, Plan-Bā¦
The above explanation fits the SFC quite well, as would this naming convention.
I expect each faction to have a train of thought the others would never think of. And that being reinforced by the responses of the other sides. I donāt think the US would name a ship Ho Chi Min but Viet Nam might.
The ships named after heroes would be different. Named after places would be different.
Set some ground rules and have the community name the ships. The Naming Committee.
Pretty much this.
The three faction have clearly different cultures, which is highly visible in their ship design differences. The design guidelines even have elements about their cultures, precisely because of this. Having them naming their ships the same way despite this, or having names all over the place for everyone, would actually be quite jarring.
To take historical examples, you expect the US to name some of their ships Enterprise, not the USSR. Similarly, you wouldnāt expect the Centauran (spiritually-minded, reluctant to use deadly force, who tends to react instead of taking military initiative) to call one of their ship Skullcracker. Similarly, you donāt expect the SFC (practical-minded, dislike outside intervention and prefer to be left to their own devices, with a history of defending their freedom and independence with heavy military) to call one of their ships Equalizer or Arbiter. (Well, actually Equalizer would work as an ironic name, as in āWith those babies, everyone is equal on the battlefield!ā)
Naming conventions donāt need to be precise like āCruisers are named after past battles, Destroyers after past Admiralsā¦ā, but it needs to at least take into account how those cultures would call their varied ships.
Ideally, you could even regroup ships into āfamiliesā, be it meant as ships from the same sector, local culture or corporation, with similar ways to name their ships, but that would probably be more for the MMO than I:B itself.
For naming individual ships I think ThornEel has an excellent point.
Are we planning to name individual NPC ships? I figured itād be just the models getting names, and those names would be decided by the company producing them based on what will sell the best to all available costumers (both in-universe and out).
I was hoping we could take some of the work lode off your backs. That we might have time to divide names between the factions. Anyway ā¦ Olympic, Katana, Jenner, (well it worked in battleteck) Vindicater, Witches Point, Cutlass.
I was expecting we would name classes of ships not individual ships. /shrugs
I think those of you who pledge the alpha testing tier for the Kickstarter will have an opportunity to influence the names of at least some of the ships.
I expect SFC to use some sort of code for their shiptypes, like āBuster B-2ARā or āSRK-02ā. In the automotive industries this is common practice. In military industries even more.
In-game I hope there will be a difference between the type of the ship and the name given by the player. The type would often be quite technical sounding, for example a code that indicates the version and important features of the ship (could be nonsense, could be based on actual attributes of the ship). The name the player gives the ship could be anything.
I actually did bring up the idea of alpha-numeric designations for ships a while back, but I donāt think the rest of the devteam was interested (I actually made one way back when the T-Y9)
There will not be a huge number of ships to deal with here, so realistically the devteam should be able to handle the naming. However, that should not stop anyone on the forums from throwing out names when we show unnamed content. Sometimes names just stick to assets and feel right, no matter where they come from.
As for the unnamed bomber we showed, so far I like the suggestions of Hammer & Fist.