Suggestion: Individualize ships by naming them

[Astuur]

I know it is something that Settlers had, too.
All the same I think it would be nice and helpful, if we had a way to tell ships apart.
Default names given automatically, changeable by the user might be best.
But a simple numbering would also help already.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I think this is a good suggestion to easier keep the different ships apart.

Though, when designing this, we need to address the follwing issues:
A. Translation. The names should be easily translatable, or have "international" names. By international, I mean it should be somewhat recognizable even without translation. I vaguely remember settlers 2 used the names of the Roman gods, which might be considered a set of universially recognized names which in some cases doesn't really need that much work in the translation department.
B. Uniqueness. If we have a selection of names, we can rely on players exhausting this and we need to know what happens when we run out of names. Worst case, someone will try to build dozens of ships. I think the easiest strategy is the following:
1. Put all available names in a hat.
2. When a new ship is created, pull a random name out of the hat and assign it to the ship. The name does _not_ go back in the hat.
3. When all names are applied to the different ships, put them back in the hat for additional ships.
This means that in games where the name limit is not reached, the player will have a random set of names for his/her ships. When we run out of names, it loops, but they are still randomly assigned. (I think the same order every time would be tedious after the first couple of games). Each player have their own hat, so two players might have ships with the same name, but with different color (and maybe tribe) it should be easy to keep them apart.
C. Do we want the same common names across all tribes, or do we want specific names for each tribe? The latter might add to the uniqueness, but require us to come up with more names.

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

Why not just assign a number to each ship and give the player the ability to change that to a name of his/her choosing?

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I like these suggestions.

My opinion:
Definitely not the same names for different tribes!

I'd propose seabirds' names for the "hat". Seems fitting.
Why do we not add a number to the ships name if it is no more unique otherwise?
(second and higher "rounds")

Can we allow the users to name their ships as they wish?
I hope so. Such names should of course not be translated at all.

[SirVer (sirver)]

This should be possible - it just is a little random that all workers are nameless but ship have names. The ship names could be randomly chooses from a per tribe list.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>it just is a little random that all workers are nameless but ship have names
Bug 581408 :)

[Frank Pieper (frank-pieper-1)]

I suggest to adapt Names also for Workers as I encountered several Times the Need to identify Workers.
Most often I need MasterMiners and watch out for Miners with most XP to favorate them for new Mines to get quickly advanced. Without a Name it's pure Luck to check really all or select surely a specific.

I think Names for Workers (Units) like Jack Doyle and Sites (Doyle's Smith) is a fine Step ahead for the Game.
I don't think Site-Names are that important like Unit-Names but I won't resign for Sites to avoid unneccesary Diffs between Class Site and Unit. Especially Sites like Inn need an individual Name to be authentic. There are 1000 of SuperMarkets but just one "Dancing Bear". Also Mails about Sites with Problems get more useful if they have an unique Name to identify clearly.

I see multiple Reasons to name Units and Sites and but no strong Reason to don't enable naming them. Don't implement there Exceptions if not necessary. Default-Names where no individual Name are needed avoid writing and runnung expensive Checks (IF) for and nobody should care about lost 2KB MEM for unused NamePointer as these can Point to same Default-Strings.

I consider the Ability of Player, to name his Units/Sites like he want resp need to be most simple and most important. Other supporting Auto-Naming-Performances may follow anytime.

[SirVer (sirver)]

We discussed names for workers before and deemed it a so-so feature (iirc). I feel the same about ships. I can see how naming them makes more sense than workers - after all the Spanish king knew the name of his ships, not of his soldiers. But I think adding a renaming feature is feature creep.

And one could argue names are already - you do not care about the individuallity of your carriers, why should you about your ships? I am a weak -1 for this feature.

[fuchur (fuchur77)]

I only tested the new expedition feature once so I don't have much experience with it. But maybe if you start more than one expedition it could be helpful to distinguish the ships.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

For those interested, the discussion around worker names was bug 581408.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Setting to incomplete for bug sweeping.

[SirVer (sirver)]

To my understanding, this is now implemented.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build19-rc1.