Ship naming and My Properties list
Posted: Fri, 27. Apr 18, 03:33
Here's something I've always been curious on regarding how others manage their properties in X3.
What kind of nomenclature do you use for your ships and stations? That is, how do you name your ships? Similarly, how do you manage your properties list? Do you let everything remain visible or do you hide specific properties to keep the list tidy and easy to find what you need at a glance?
Here are my methods in case anyone's interested:
Regarding ship names, I like to name all of my ships after some fictional ships in TV/Film/Book series I like. For example, my first ST/UT is usually the Nostromo, from the film Aliens. But I also like to be able to immediately see some additional information about my ships when I open my properties list, like ship class, type, and role. So using the example of the Nostromo, when I first install Trade Mk3 software and start it as a sector trader it's name should be:
(ST) Nostromo (Mercury-TS)
Once it's reached the proper level and it can start as a UT, I rename it with (UT) at the beginning instead. This way, when I open my properties list if I'm looking for a specific ship I can just quickly go down the list scanning that first "tag" of "(ST) / (UT)" to find what I need. Similarly, if a ship is of a specific variant I will include that in the class/type tag at the end. For example, a captured Demeter Super Freighter XL that I'm using as a manual transport has the name:
(T) Hunter Gratzner (Demeter.SFXL-TS)
Here are all of the tags I use to denote various roles:
(ST/UT/LT) - Sector Trader / Universe Trader / Local Trader
(T) - Manual Transporter / Misc Storage Ship
(C) - Carrier (regardless of class, this denotes a vessel which I use strictly for ship storage/pickup)
(SD) - Sector Defense (for larger class ships with fighter wings docked, used primarily for station/complex defense)
(P) - Patrol Leader (usually M6 vessels with two or three supporting fighters)
If a ship doesn't meet any of these criteria, it doesn't get a tag. Examples being M5-M3's assigned as a fighter wing to an (SD).
For station names I have a similar structure, also naming my stations and complexes after fictional space stations. For example, my first solar power plant is almost always named Solaris. Station name layout is the same as ships:
Solaris Station (SPP.XL)
Some other interesting bits related to the My Properties list:
First and foremost I disable satellites from showing in the list, as I think most other players probably also do. This cleans up much of the list. I then set all of my automated traders to Hidden (under ship control - command console - hide from property menu). HOWEVER, after doing this I go into the Options menu on the properties list (tab on far right side) and set the option "Don't Show Hidden Ships" to "NO" - This means the ships still show up in the list, but it has the awesome effect of changing the text color of those ships in this list to grey instead of green. I find that incredibly helpful because it means at a quick glance I can still easily find any ships I want by looking for green text, but if something bad is happening with one of my automated traders I can still see their grey entries in the list and quickly find the ship in question to address it's problems.
Interestingly, when you have a lot of fighters docked on a carrier somewhere, putting the (C) or (SD) in front of that ship's name has the nice side effect of showing that tag at the beginning of the fighters' location, so when scrolling through the list if I'm looking for something specific I can quickly see which fighters are docked on a carrier and which just happen to be in the same system as that carrier. (Hopefully this is easy to understand, it's hard to describe in text without a screenshot -- maybe I'll upload one if anyone's curious).
Anyway, I'm rambling. How do you all name your ships and stations, and how do you manage your property menu?
What kind of nomenclature do you use for your ships and stations? That is, how do you name your ships? Similarly, how do you manage your properties list? Do you let everything remain visible or do you hide specific properties to keep the list tidy and easy to find what you need at a glance?
Here are my methods in case anyone's interested:
Regarding ship names, I like to name all of my ships after some fictional ships in TV/Film/Book series I like. For example, my first ST/UT is usually the Nostromo, from the film Aliens. But I also like to be able to immediately see some additional information about my ships when I open my properties list, like ship class, type, and role. So using the example of the Nostromo, when I first install Trade Mk3 software and start it as a sector trader it's name should be:
(ST) Nostromo (Mercury-TS)
Once it's reached the proper level and it can start as a UT, I rename it with (UT) at the beginning instead. This way, when I open my properties list if I'm looking for a specific ship I can just quickly go down the list scanning that first "tag" of "(ST) / (UT)" to find what I need. Similarly, if a ship is of a specific variant I will include that in the class/type tag at the end. For example, a captured Demeter Super Freighter XL that I'm using as a manual transport has the name:
(T) Hunter Gratzner (Demeter.SFXL-TS)
Here are all of the tags I use to denote various roles:
(ST/UT/LT) - Sector Trader / Universe Trader / Local Trader
(T) - Manual Transporter / Misc Storage Ship
(C) - Carrier (regardless of class, this denotes a vessel which I use strictly for ship storage/pickup)
(SD) - Sector Defense (for larger class ships with fighter wings docked, used primarily for station/complex defense)
(P) - Patrol Leader (usually M6 vessels with two or three supporting fighters)
If a ship doesn't meet any of these criteria, it doesn't get a tag. Examples being M5-M3's assigned as a fighter wing to an (SD).
For station names I have a similar structure, also naming my stations and complexes after fictional space stations. For example, my first solar power plant is almost always named Solaris. Station name layout is the same as ships:
Solaris Station (SPP.XL)
Some other interesting bits related to the My Properties list:
First and foremost I disable satellites from showing in the list, as I think most other players probably also do. This cleans up much of the list. I then set all of my automated traders to Hidden (under ship control - command console - hide from property menu). HOWEVER, after doing this I go into the Options menu on the properties list (tab on far right side) and set the option "Don't Show Hidden Ships" to "NO" - This means the ships still show up in the list, but it has the awesome effect of changing the text color of those ships in this list to grey instead of green. I find that incredibly helpful because it means at a quick glance I can still easily find any ships I want by looking for green text, but if something bad is happening with one of my automated traders I can still see their grey entries in the list and quickly find the ship in question to address it's problems.
Interestingly, when you have a lot of fighters docked on a carrier somewhere, putting the (C) or (SD) in front of that ship's name has the nice side effect of showing that tag at the beginning of the fighters' location, so when scrolling through the list if I'm looking for something specific I can quickly see which fighters are docked on a carrier and which just happen to be in the same system as that carrier. (Hopefully this is easy to understand, it's hard to describe in text without a screenshot -- maybe I'll upload one if anyone's curious).
Anyway, I'm rambling. How do you all name your ships and stations, and how do you manage your property menu?