As a background "Immersion" item that I would like- a better system for autonaming resources.
I *hate* that the system as it stands give me complete unmemorable names, both for ships/starbases, and (To a lesser extent) for starsystems/planets.
A- The less necessary one first - I'm not sure it's necessary, or even if it would work in pratice the way I am visualizing it as an immersion tool, but I would love to see an attempt at an automatic naming system in which each empire had their own renaming system for starsystems - say, internally, every star is only 'named' by it's x,y,z coordinates, but is aliased once for the player when the map is created (What the star names are in that worlds tradition) and is then renamed permanently when colonized "We call it Vega, but the Altarians called it Mithranta, an ancient Goddess of mercy, and I guess they live there now . . . "), and then it's called Mithrantar from there on out.
I can see this not working at all - You don't want stars renamed all the time so you can't remember what's where. On the other had, done right, it seems to me that it ought to be feasible to make this something that reminds people of What's where - you 'know' if you see Vulcan, Andor, and Sol, you're in Federation space, even if Vulcan and Andor aren't the homeworld or in the same spot on every map.
B- An automated ship and starbase naming system that allowed the player to assign a 'class' to each ship or starbase design, and then assign a naming scheme to that 'class' and design that pulls information from the information, kind of like renaming a tagged MP3 file. Say your ship is Design is 'Constitution' and Class is "Heavy Cruiser", the full tagging scheme might be something like:
Classtags.Heavy_Cruiser="%Class%<br>Warp %Speed%<br>Range %Range% Parsecs<br>Attack: %Offense%<br>Shielding: %Defense%"
Designtags.Constitution="%Empire-prefix% NCC-%#1700% %file://\%Empire-prefix\%/\%Class\%.xml:Random%: %Classtags%" ",
Resulting in the system pulling shipname at random from the file UFP\Heavy_Cruiser.xml in your save folder, placing your cursor over a ship and getting something like
UFP NCC-1700 Potemkin: Heavy Cruiser:
Warp 5
Range 15 Parsecs,
Offense 14
Defense 8
There are probably better ways to do that in xml, but that's the basic gist.
Edit: Obviously I wanted the same kind of options for Starbases as well. Maybe a tag to key in on closest system and name by starbase type "Vega Dilithium Cracking Station" or something.
Oh, and I *Still* want a toggle on the starbase and planet screens that simply toggles a Rally point, of the same name as the starbase, on and off. Then I can just toggle on a starbase and set the panets closest to send constructors to the Rally Point.
Jonnan
