Author Topic: WarShip naming conventions  (Read 2180 times)

Legatus

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WarShip naming conventions
« on: 08 June 2015, 20:17:06 »
Just curious - why are nearly all of the WarShip classes named after something other than the lead ship?  The only one I can think of that actually follows this standard convention is the Impavido.  I know this is not very important, but I have always been curious about this quirk.

HABeas2

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Re: WarShip naming conventions
« Reply #1 on: 08 June 2015, 20:22:44 »
Hard to say. We also don't know if that's really the case. Though it can make some sense in context: Many ships probably established the first in class as a "prototype/template" which subsequent ships improved upon in subtle ways, making that first one just a bit clunky and obsolete. Thus, they decided the class would use a later ship as its "lead" vessel. Another possibility is that, somewhere between the drafting, planning, the beginning of production and the final christening, political or social issues might have emerged that prompted a name change. Maybe a major donor to get the project through insisted on doing so only at the "trivial" price of being allowed to name the first ship or two.

Bottom line: Meh; we haven't put that much thought into it.

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GhostBear

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Re: WarShip naming conventions
« Reply #2 on: 09 June 2015, 08:06:23 »
Hard to say. We also don't know if that's really the case. Though it can make some sense in context: Many ships probably established the first in class as a "prototype/template" which subsequent ships improved upon in subtle ways, making that first one just a bit clunky and obsolete. Thus, they decided the class would use a later ship as its "lead" vessel. Another possibility is that, somewhere between the drafting, planning, the beginning of production and the final christening, political or social issues might have emerged that prompted a name change. Maybe a major donor to get the project through insisted on doing so only at the "trivial" price of being allowed to name the first ship or two.

Bottom line: Meh; we haven't put that much thought into it.

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True.

I will say the exception that I know of is the Samarkand line, which is named after prominent worlds within the Combine.
Eh.

HABeas2

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Re: WarShip naming conventions
« Reply #3 on: 09 June 2015, 12:01:41 »
True.

I will say the exception that I know of is the Samarkand line, which is named after prominent worlds within the Combine.

Oh, yeah; and as I've been plowing through the First War, I've been adding names to various ships based on nomenclature conventions of my own (such as the Lyrans naming Makos after Roman Caesars, while the more provincial Free Worlds uses a nomenclature based more on regional culture, resulting in the League-class destroyers around Bolan receiving names based on the geography of the Indo-Pakistani area of Terra)... 

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Legatus

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Re: WarShip naming conventions
« Reply #4 on: 09 June 2015, 21:00:49 »
Cool!  Thanks for giving us a look behind the curtain.