[Suggestion/QoL] Rename and rename fleet input controls

[azaghal]

Throughout the game the players will often be renaming various objects (navigation beacons, ships, stations, fleets) to more easily identify their purpose, location etc. Players will also often rename particular ships which are meant for "personal" use.

One of the more accessible ways to rename an object is via its context menu (right-click in the map etc).

However, when renaming a lot of objects in succession, it can become repetitive and tedious to keep bringing up the context menu, and having to select the option.

It would be a nice addition if two additional input controls were introduced specifically for triggering rename of currently selected object (while in the map menu) - one input control for renaming the object itself, and one input control for renaming the fleet (if said object is a ship and fleet commander).

[Raptor34]

More hotkeys would be good, but I would rather see a proper prefix/suffix system. Well, just prefix would be good enough since that's how it sorts by.
Nothing worse than ordering a hundred ships, realizing you forgot to rename them... I just scrap the whole fleet and reorder than deal with that shit.

[azaghal]

More hotkeys would be good, but I would rather see a proper prefix/suffix system. Well, just prefix would be good enough since that's how it sorts by.
Nothing worse than ordering a hundred ships, realizing you forgot to rename them... I just scrap the whole fleet and reorder than deal with that shit.

I agree on this, but figured might as well try to go for low-hanging fruit for starters at least (being fully aware that others have requested a bunch of such features before - nothing original in my suggestion beyond trying to quantify it a bit via poll). As for the mass renames... I guess a couple of things are missing:

• Just a plain mass-rename of selected ships ("Rename" item in the context menu). Should be low-hanging fruit as well?
• Mass-rename of ships when you send them out for an upgrade (like what's currently available when you order bunch of new ships). _Might_ be low-hanging fruit?
• Some kind of pattern-based rename system (basically what you suggested). Massive bikeshedding opportunities - everyone has their own pattern preferences.
• Auto-rename for ships in a fleet as they join/depart, probably based on a pattern. Might require being able to set some properties per-fleet (with global defaults) or something like that. So probably a bit more invasive.

I actually had done some work locally on a mod for my own use for doing pattern-based renames (though there were others as well out there that I tried out). Just not using it currently to keep the game fully vanilla (otherwise it really fit my needs well, although it was not that modular/dynamically configurable). As a small example what I have come up with:

Code: Select all

        <!--
            Rename templates. Supported parameters:

            (CL) - Commander label (PROD-01, TRD-02, PROD-01-A001)
            (GN) - Group name (Alpha, Beta, Gamma)
            (GN:S) - Group name, short (Al, Be, Ga)
            (GA) - Group assignment (Defence, Trade)
            (GA:C) - Group assignment, colour (Defence, Trade)
            (GA:S) - Group assignment, short (Def, Trd)
            (GA:SC) - Group task, short, colour (Def, Trd)
            (GA:L) - Group assignment, letter code (D, T)
            (GA:LC) - Group assignment, letter code, colour (D, T)
            (SL) - Ship label (PROD-01-A001,PROD-01-B001)
            (SN) - Ship number/sequence (001, 002)
            (SM) - Ship model (Mercury Vanguard, Elite Vanguard)
            (SS) - Ship size (S, M, L, XL)
            (ST) - Ship type (Courier, Freighter)
            (ST:S) - Ship type, short (COU, FRT)
        -->
        <set_value
            name="$RENAME_TEMPLATE"
            exact="table[
              $default = '[(SL)] (GA:C) - (SM) ((SS))'
            ]"
            />

The :C variants would make specific parts colour-coded (this is hard-coded somewhere else in the code).

So, this would result in something like this:

Code: Select all

[PROD-01] Trade - Mercury Vanguard (M)

The idea was to allow to easily change what the pattern is. The main problem with this approach is how to make it accessible to most players (I'm used to templating, but can't assume everyone works in the same field etc).

[Raptor34]

I'm not suggesting anything pattern based. But it's basically like mass renaming, except it's basically adding stuff in front, that's why prefix.
So I'll just select a whole bunch of disparate ships and basically say I want to add ST which stands for station trader in front of it. And then it just adds it. It can be a specific system itself or whatever, I don't mind. As long as the sorting system which afaict by default is alphabetically, uses it then it's fine.
This would be more convenient then mass renaming in the case when you rename ships of different types. I generally keep ship class names so I can tell what exactly to replace when it dies.