Ship building, it's almost a game within a game. Trying to squeeze in all the firepower, defense, speed, range, etc you can while maintaining some modicum of affordability as well as the asthetic aspect of making a ship look menacing. However, when you've completed your masterpiece, what do you call it? I find that I simply can't let myself spend 45 minutes (or more) on a single ship design and not give it an equally unique and well-thought-out name.
How do you all name your ships?
I tend to pick a "theme" for a given game, sometimes themes repeat across multiple games. I've created multiple custom races, sometimes those are based on real-world ideas. I have a "Roman" race and a "Minoan" (pre-classical greek) race. Ship naming for those is pretty easy: Pilum, Scuta, Phalanx, Gladius, etc for the Romans and Hoplite, Minotaur, Fury, etc for the Greek. Improvements to existing designs I'll "upgrade", e.g. Fury Mark IA.
In my current game, I'm using a custom race not based on much of anything. I've been using a "Sharks and Rays" theme for my names. Ships with names like Mako, Squalus, Carcaradon, Manta, and the like now grace my fleets.
I've never had an enemy fleet turn tail and run based simply on artistic menace (the 5 doom ray cannons have turned a few though) but I'm hoping one day to hear cries of "Oh noes! The Dogfish Killers are coming!" ecoing from Altaria as my fleets approach.
