Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

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grapedog
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Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by grapedog » Sun, 7. Aug 22, 04:40

I'd like to request an auto-naming system for subordinate ships to stations. Say I have station named HC I - Hull Parts Complex in Hatikvah's Choice I. If I subordinate a trader to it, the trade gets auto named to the name of the station, with a trader or miner added to the end based on the type of role you select for it. So an attached trade ship would get auto named HC I - Hull Parts Complex - Trader. A ship attached as a miner, would get renamed to station name - miner.

I already re-name my stations, and all my attached ships to every single station I build... which just gets tiresome after a while. And while yes, you can name them while being built, sometimes they switch stations or I'm buying/building ships for multiple stations at once. It would be a really sweet seemingly-simple mechanic to add to the game.

Bozz11
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by Bozz11 » Sun, 7. Aug 22, 21:07

I second this

jsmaltz
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by jsmaltz » Sun, 7. Aug 22, 22:18

I do this manually, auto would be awesome.

I also have size and a number. AP Hull_Gas_L_01

When a message comes through, I can find the ship rather quick. Also, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V work while renaming.

HammerHead91
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by HammerHead91 » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 01:54

I can see this being useful if it's tied to specific goods in the selection box.

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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by HammerHead91 » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 01:55

I can see this being useful if it's tied to specific goods in the selection box.

Oh, and I'd love to be able to rename the ABC-123 codes that ships have.

CBJ
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by CBJ » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 10:35

grapedog wrote:
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 04:40
...seemingly-simple...
"Seemingly" being the operative word. Yes, it would be simple enough to add automatic naming based on your personal definition of how you'd like it to work, but everyone else has their own, different, idea of what makes a good naming convention for ships. There have been any number of suggestions like this, and every single one of them has been different, often radically so. It's one of those cases where creating something that satisfies even a small percentage of players would be quite a bit of work, and it gets exponentially more difficult from there!
HammerHead91 wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 01:55
Oh, and I'd love to be able to rename the ABC-123 codes that ships have.
There are technical reasons why we can't do that, or at least why you'd be limited to that format, making it of very limited usefulness. Another practical reason why it wouldn't be a great ideas is that It also drastically increases the chances of those ID codes no longer being unique, making ship identification harder for the player.

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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by HammerHead91 » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 11:36

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 10:35
HammerHead91 wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 01:55
Oh, and I'd love to be able to rename the ABC-123 codes that ships have.
There are technical reasons why we can't do that, or at least why you'd be limited to that format, making it of very limited usefulness. Another practical reason why it wouldn't be a great ideas is that It also drastically increases the chances of those ID codes no longer being unique, making ship identification harder for the player.
As opposed to the current system of having randomly-named callsigns which presumably already have their own look-up table.

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grapedog
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by grapedog » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 17:59

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 10:35
grapedog wrote:
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 04:40
...seemingly-simple...
"Seemingly" being the operative word. Yes, it would be simple enough to add automatic naming based on your personal definition of how you'd like it to work, but everyone else has their own, different, idea of what makes a good naming convention for ships. There have been any number of suggestions like this, and every single one of them has been different, often radically so. It's one of those cases where creating something that satisfies even a small percentage of players would be quite a bit of work, and it gets exponentially more difficult from there!
I don't know if I agree with the idea of nothing being better than something. At least if there was a basic naming convention when attaching a ship to a station, it would differentiate subordinate ships from those default named ships that are auto-working without being assigned to a station.

Regardless, I know you all have a pile of stuff you're working on, and I appreciate you taking time to take a look at the suggestion and respond to it.

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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by Rei Ayanami » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 18:35

What could be done to make it customizable is to add a parseable naming format text box to stations or ships :
Subordinate auto naming : [ ]

In this you could put in text and special operators in which way you want a subordinate named, like
%npc the name of the captain NPC ("Yan Heri")
%commander the commander station/ship name ("Argon Prime Ship Technology Factory II")
%role the role of the NPCs assigned ship job ("trader", "defender", "salvager"...)
%ship the ships name ("Demeter")
%type the ships type, if available ("Vanguard")

A textbox written as
Subordinate auto naming : [%commander - %role - %ship]
and a Cerberus assigned to defend the station "Argon Prime Ship Technology Factory II" would result in the automatic re-naming to
"Argon Prime Ship Technology Factory II - Defender - Cerberus"

if someone doesn't like that they can do it differently
Subordinate auto naming : [%commander - %ship %role]
"Argon Prime Ship Technology Factory II - Cerberus Defender"

or
Subordinate auto naming : [%ship %type - %role of %commander]
"Cerberus Vanguard - Defender of Argon Prime Ship Technology Factory II"

Of course, that'd require quite a bit of work (there are parser libraries out there, but still...) and would require re-naming events in case the commander gets renamed or if the role, pilot, etc changes, but it'd probably be the best way of having highly customizable auto-renaming options

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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by Raevyan » Tue, 9. Aug 22, 12:16

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 10:35
grapedog wrote:
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 04:40
...seemingly-simple...
"Seemingly" being the operative word. Yes, it would be simple enough to add automatic naming based on your personal definition of how you'd like it to work, but everyone else has their own, different, idea of what makes a good naming convention for ships. There have been any number of suggestions like this, and every single one of them has been different, often radically so. It's one of those cases where creating something that satisfies even a small percentage of players would be quite a bit of work, and it gets exponentially more difficult from there!
HammerHead91 wrote:
Mon, 8. Aug 22, 01:55
Oh, and I'd love to be able to rename the ABC-123 codes that ships have.
There are technical reasons why we can't do that, or at least why you'd be limited to that format, making it of very limited usefulness. Another practical reason why it wouldn't be a great ideas is that It also drastically increases the chances of those ID codes no longer being unique, making ship identification harder for the player.
Maybe at least tell us their commander in the logfile? Right now it just says „Dornia has been destroyed by x in sector y“. But we have no clue who was it’s commander to put in a replacement for the lost asset. That should be doable, right?

CBJ
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Re: Request - Auto Naming System for Station Subordinates

Post by CBJ » Tue, 9. Aug 22, 15:09

rene6740 wrote:
Tue, 9. Aug 22, 12:16
Maybe at least tell us their commander in the logfile? Right now it just says „Dornia has been destroyed by x in sector y“. But we have no clue who was it’s commander to put in a replacement for the lost asset. That should be doable, right?
There are other issues that complicate that, for example by the time you read the log entry, the commander may no longer exist, or may themselves have been reassigned or renamed. Some of these issues should be possible to solve, but it's not a completely trivial feature. However, regardless of that, this has little or nothing to do with the OP's request, so lets' not divert this thread. :)

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