Ship Nomenclature

[Type] [Hull] [xN] [Ad] [B

I seem to be a combination of the two of you. I use the first letter of the shop size (T for Tiny ) followed by a cool sounding name. Or at least at the time they seem cool. A good example would be the S-PitSpider, for a small ship with no manerverability that lays in wait, holding its own with strong offence and adequate defences. Of course there are only so many times you can see the PitSpider pop up. This frustration often leads to the L-IckIcky.  

I name ships depending on the mood I'm in. Sometimes I use a certain theme like "monsters" (With ship names like banshee, wraith, wendigo, etc) or "ideals" (Virtue, courage, etc.) Other times I'll use more practical names, like "Assault Fighter".

One time, when playing as the Korx, I set up a system where I had:
"name" [type] [generation]

Giving me ships like "Venture" LRHF 2 (which stands for long-range heavy fighter)

If I end up getting large ships that use a strategy of quality over quantity, then I may name individual ships... again, depending on my mood. I recall having a few huge hulls in a game where the majority of my fleets were made of frigates... those lifesaving dreadnoughts that formed the flagships of my fleets always had a unique name.

I base mine loosely on Star Fleet Battles nomenclature, with a suffix for speed and variant.

Tiny – frigate (FF)
Small – destroyer (DD)
Medium – cruiser (CA)
Large – dreadnaught (DD)
Huge – battleship (BB)

Scouts have an ‘S’ that replaces the second letter. A survey ship is a GSC (galactic survey ship). Colony ships are “Col” and Transports are “Trans” and “HTrans” for heavy transport.

So, my fourth version of a medium hull that is speed 5 would be: CA-5d.

I used to code in the weapon and armor types as well as factors for both, but the Ids became alphanumeric soup. Plus, I found that I knew in general which variant had what weapon. If a ship was intended for a different theatre against an enemy with wildly different weapons I may code that, though.

Not terribly emotive, and not overly technical.

Hydro

I've got to ask: why are your large hulls dreadnaughts and huge hulls battleships instead of the other way around? A dreadnaught is generally the biggest ship around... patterned on the Dreadnaught of WWI, which was so big and technically advanced that it rendered all current warships obsolete.

Altarian M-50
Altarian medium ship with 50 damage of some sort. Sometimes I get more specific and you end up with a M-50b for beam weapons or a M-50b7m.
Sometimes I get silly with them though.
I made a custom race called the Ganja's and had them running around in large ships called bingers, medium were spliffs. Another custom race was The Draconics. Hatchling, Whelp, Draco, Wyrm class ships with a damage suffix. Also I made the Like Rabbits (breeder race) the colony ship was called The Bunny Ranch, huge end game ship was the Heffner class.

Actually battleship and dreadnought are sort of interchangeable terms; Dreadnoughts are usually battleships built before WWI, and predreadnoughts are refer to battleships built during the 1900s and 1890s that dont have the centralized large caliber guns of HMS Dreadnought.

But eventually battleships grew from ~20,000 tons from the WWI era to well over 40,000 tons in WWII. So for all intents and purposes, Battleship > Dreadnought

I like to go with names of mele weapons for the tiny, small, and medium ships- Katana, Broadsword, Arrow, Trident, ect.

For the larger ships I tend to steal from mythology or Final Fantasy- Zeus, Posiden, Shiva, Bahamut.

After all, I can always check the stats of a ship if nessary. But if i'm browsing through them then all I need is a name I relate to a certain amount of power- I read Arrow, I think "fast, but not all that strong."

[Hullsize][Main Weapon Type]-[Generation][Additional modules] [Name]

Hullsize is A (tiny) to E (huge), cargo gets a O. Additional modules would be shields for example, so a small beam fighter with shields would get a BB-1s.

Names are either meelee weapons (epee, dagger, falchion...), insects (wasp, hornet...) or birds (hawk, eagle...). If I'm feeling rpg'ish, I'll use German names instead.

[Hull type]-[Generation][Subgeneration] [Name relating to purpose]

For a fourth generation fighter, a name might be "F-4 Enfield," and for a second-generation sensor cargo barge which has been updated because of miniaturization, it might be "C-2a Sky Eye".

I like to roleplay my ship names. I mean, usually i play custom races, so i try to pick names consistent with the "background".
For example, when i'm playing my USSP games (that's a sort of USSR in space) i go for stuff like MiG-101b Fireflash for fighters or Kirov BBS (Beam Battle Ship) for capital ships.
Right now i'm playing with my Brotherhood of Nod custom race (Kane is raw charisma *_*) and i'm going for names like Avatar, Pillar, or Hammer of Nod for capital ships, and Militant or Fanatic for fighters.