We know you can (re)name your ships once they leave the shipyard.

These names should go along with registries (NCC-1701-D) for instance, and should be linked to specific font files for use in tactical combat. For example, you want a flagship, maybe the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, right? What happens then in battle? Just a plain texture surrounding your so-called flagship? NO! On the saucer, it mightily displays "USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-E"! Same goes for the rest of your fleet. There should be ship names lists as is in BotF1, but also the option to change the name and see the name changed visually in combat. Also, changing names should be limited to 1 or 2 times only, since we have never seen a ship name changed more than once (I think? DS9 Sao Paulo?)

Thoughts?

That feature is already in. Except for the saucer part.

To change the name of the ship on the hull in the combat engine will require a texture file UV mapped to that location and that is user defined. We will have to ask Mike if he can code a way to define user entered text to print on an image file in some standard format for all ships. Each named ship will require it have the UV mapping rewired to take the name texture, black letters on a transparent background. A quick and dirty way is to add a standard rectangular plane to old models that will be UV mapped to the image file and located on the hull in the correct place. We do not have a system for changing the size of that mesh on the fly so the text would be limited to a predefined number of characters. In combat with a large number of ships you would be unlikely to see it.

The Klingon Attack Cruiser - Hello Kitty.
The Dominion Battle Ship - Rose Bud.

As we do not yet have a combat engine I guess we can take this idea up again a little later.

Sounds like a massive undertaking for very little reward.

This is what you would see in our old combat engine when zoomed to see the whole fight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uq1xt68LhI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G4cFfP36LQ

I think the reward is purely visual, interactive, and canon (I am a sucker for canon stuff )

The tricky part is to find how they do it on Alien starships (Romulan, Cardassian, etc..)

Moddable is what it needs to be

EDIT: And since you are taking suggestions to make the game better, from a veterean BotF player, these are things Im sure many others would love to see as well. Please take them into consideration is all we (the fans) ask

It would look very nice. We are still working on some more basic issue right now though. We will keep it in mind. I would do it for major race ships if it happens.

Would be awesome, but would it be programmable? Especially things like registry numbers which don't currently exist in any fashion, (thank god no more Sutherland A, Sutherland B etc!!)

I would assume that if USS Names are programmable, then NCC-Registries should be as well.

Perhaps they (registries) could be in chronological order (read a good post on this somewhere IIRC (aha its on trekmania, what a coincidence ) http://www.trekmania.net/the_fleet/utop ... system.htm ) with lower ones reserved for early ships, and as the ships advance the registries are randomly picked from their selective time period. This way, you might have the USS Tangerine NCC-23200 in one game, and then in another game you would have the USS Tangerine NCC-25020. This way it could be unique while still keeping its roots in the Star Trek Universe.

For important ships (USS Enterprise, USS Voyager etc) would require name and registry to be linked (USS Enterprise could follow some sort of registry lineage line as well, 1701-A, 1701-B for specific class of ship only, Connie refit, Excelsior refit, etc...)

For experimental vessels (first of their class, USS Akira) an NX-Registry could be randomly used, but for ones we know of already, such as the USS Prometheus NX-59650, would be automatically linked.

Now, in the event you try to specify a starship registry that is already in use, or one that is in the 'canon ship registries' database, the game pops up a window explaining that you cant do this, and will make you change the registry manually, or it will select one automatically from the ship's time period. If you have the ship, USS Enterprise 1701-E (or any important ship), destroyed in battle, you DO have the option of renaming a Sovereign class ship to USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E a maximum of ONE time, after it is lost the second time, your Sol (pun intended?)

Also, for non-Federation ships (Rom etc) names and registries can be completely random, as we dont know how they number their ships in canon.

On a side note, it would be epic to have a Fleet Summary Screen outlining all your current ships that are in active duty, have been lost due to random events (good for Ocampa array, wormhole, or Q), have been destroyed, or are currently under construction, being refitted, have been refitted, have been decommissioned, and various other service history. See link below for how this could be set up:

http://i32.tinypic.com/egsjg2.jpg
http://i30.tinypic.com/20ztb1h.jpg

These are my thoughts, take them for what they are worth (which is not alot actually )

EDIT: Updated

These are the words of our lead programmer, think about them while reading your proposals. Now I do like what you are proposing, but the implementation is just not worth it. Also we are trying to equalize the major races in the game, while this feature would be cool to a Federation player, it would be useless to other race players, which gives this feature additional minus points.

Thanks, vjeko, I couldn't have said it better myself . It's a cool idea, but being cool doesn't cut it when we have such limited resources. And as vjeko said, features which only really benefit one empire are generally undesirable. Moreover, features which are purely cosmetic seldom end up with enough points to be considered.

This is the sort of thing that would probably only happen as a code mod.

What are your thoughts on this idea? I apologize if it is already in the game, I remember one of the BotF2 projects having a table like this but i cant recall if it was this one of BotE.

I'd receptive to having something like this. It'd be easy enough to implement, and we're already doing something similar for star systems.

There's a mockup in Dafedz's database.

http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/botf2_home.htm

It helps if you give a more precise link.

Dafedz's GUI Test Screens

Dafedz's Fleet GUI Test Screen

Please note the above are mockups, and do not necessarily represent anything that is present or will be present in the game.

Those mockups look very nice. These are for Supremacy? I especially like the shipyard thing

They were mockups created by Dafedz. Unfortunately Dafedz has not been on the forums in quite some time, and the discussions on how certain aspects of the game will work and look have moved beyond what these mockups show. The game will certainly look different to how the mockups show, but certain elements may yet be retained.

The shipyards, fleets, and the techtree are the current focus of the discussions we are having.