I'll usually start with one of the Stardock ships and upgrade it. The class then gets a roman numeral to indicate what version it is. So my first warship is almost always a Defender I class. If I later make a more powerful ship on a small hull, it becomes a Defender II and so on. The numeral makes it easy to see what you've not yet upgraded, or to guage the strength of a particular battle group.
If I make several versions of a ship, usually ones with the same weapons but a different defense type, I'll make that a suffix like Battle Axe II Shields or Dreadnought I Armor.
I never bother to name individual ships. I just keep the number assigned by the game.
I do the samething, and when I upgrade every ship slowly, and eventually phase out a ship class, then obsolete the entire ships when its has no ships being built or in that class.
I have about 20 defender IV's, about 15 defender V's, and about 50 defender VI's. I stopped upgrading them when I noticed that my more expensive V's had higher maintanence cost, why pay more money to have the ships cost more to maintain. My defenders are mostly meant to sit in on planets as a token force, so that at least something is on every planet, at least that was the idea. Unfortunately I am capturing planets faster than I build defenders......I've got at least 260 planets, probably 280 by now.....
I designed several new classes of ships, my first battleship is called the HAWK, but before I actually even built one i upgraded it, so it became the HAWK 2. I think I actually didn't bother with roman numberals on it, I'd have to look and double check.....same thing really to me.....
I've actually have the first Hawk 2 made now, but it hasn't actually seen battle yet, its running to the front lines.....long way to go yet.....
I made a few different phoenix version, which is my fast small size class ship.....all of them are meant to go super fast, and have decent attack and defense......I recently upgraded all the phonix to version VII, while upgrading I made a huge blunder on one of them, and upgrading I mouse slipped and made something totally worthless, and destroyed the vehicle in disgust..... I think that is one of a handful of ships I have lost the entire game.....its too bad, I think that was one of my most experienced phoenix's..
I have cruiser medium class ship that has a level 20 in game, and not sure if he can advance further, right now that medium class ship has only a few hit points shy of my Hawk.....although I think the hawk would own him, it has about three times the firepower.....
I forget the name of the medium class ship, but I just used the default in the game, I like the design of that ship.....
Oh, I also made a bunch of ships called cheapest transport, colonizer, etc..... I found I can use a tiny hull at least for Terran and throw the module to do the function I want, although its slower. Makes it cost less and thus easier to make them....
I also made a ship called the cheapest gun, because my tiny gunners weren't cheap enough at like 65 each. the cheapest gun is a ship I made uniquely to destroy one enemy scout that was going to find a whole branch that another dumb CPU player didn't use, so made it as cheap as possible to just buy the cheapest rail gun to blow away the scout......this ship costs 41, I don't think its possible to get any cheaper, 25 for the tiny, 16 for the cheapest possible rail gun......no other weapon was as cheap :0
Its sad kind of, how cheap and penny pinching I am, yet I'm the richest player in game, with like 100 K+ in credits, figure when I hit 120 K + or so I can start loosening the purse strings more, at least until I go back down to 100 K again. :0
I'm going to up the difficulty next game, this was my first metaverse game so didn't know first playing that I didn't completely suck.....
Oh, I made another ship just for fun called the octipus (probably spelled wrong), and then after I had the design, made it for 3000 troops (three adv troop transports), and then called it 3000 troop octipus.....unfortunately this initial design was flawed, the octipus looked somehow wrong when his tenticles were facing where he was going in game, and also he had an extra expense he didn't need since I was topped out at 5 parsec/week, didn't need the warp drive, which was 30 cost more, so rebuilt the entire ship and renamed it 3 K octipus, with head going where he is going (looks better), and the mark 3 engine below warp engine, so I didn't waste money without getting any extra benefit from the ship.... I made it hoping when it went out the port from planets, it would start at 6 move, but nope, was still 5, so hate wasting money on a ship design that is flawed.....
Oh, made another ship War something(bird or something avian), its 10 missile 10 missile defense, but no warp drive....they are expensive though, so don'tthink one has come off the assembly line yet, I forget if its a small or medium hull......probably medium......
