Are people actually naming their stuff?

[Palaverous]

I finished colonizing a system, planned out a theme for the names, loaded up the name change interface and... laughed.

5k ARX, 4 bucks, or the equivalent of 13 weeks of play, for every single outpost. Approximately three stations PER YEAR. You got a fully developped system? Prepare to pay more than the game itself was worth at launch.
I get it, they need to prevent spamming of silly names. 500 per station but you only get to change names once? Ok. 5k for everything in the system? Ok, sure.
5000 for every single dinky twirly tincan out there is ridiculous though.

So, I refuse to be bled dry just to name things, which frankly puts a whole damper on the whole drive to create a system and customize it in your image and kinda doesn't make me want to engage with this system anymore to be frank, but there's another issue that's less personal, created by two variables:

1) I'm apparently not alone in this.
2) There's like, what, 20 default names for new stations? 30?

Which means that if you're in a "new neighborhood" or traversing one of the colonization bridges, you're going to run into the same names, over, and over, and over again, which is honestly a bigger immersion break than seeing the occasional outpost called UR MOM or whatever it is that this system is ostensibly supposed to prevent.

 

[Kira Goto]

I've taken to [custom] naming only stations I view with a certain importance (eg my first built primary outpost, that Orbis primary station I suffered myself through pretty much on my own), otherwise I think they can just keep their assigned auto-generated names (or at least only get those rerolled rather than spending ARX).

Should be worth noting that NPC systems also have identical or very similar station names. So it's not exactly new to colonization, probably just more noticeable with how many stations/settlements there have been added by it. And I guess people pay more attention.

 

[Mr T]

I just custom name the big stations. By the time I've built them my free Arx is usually back at the 5k mark anyway.

Note that you can also re-roll the name generator if you really don't like the name of something. There is a limit on the number of times you can do that for each one (5 times)

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

There are thousands of random "default" name possibilities.
I would suggest you stop caring about how other people spend their money.

 

[Untilting]

I just custom name the big stations. By the time I've built them my free Arx is usually back at the 5k mark anyway.

Note that you can also re-roll the name generator if you really don't like the name of something. There is a limit on the number of times you can do that for each one (5 times)

You can reroll as many times as you like, it's only when you press "Confirm" that one of the five attempts is taken. So with extreme patience and a sacrifice to the gods of RNG you can establish a theme.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Looking at the systems near me:
- quite a few where someone has paid to name the main station, and maybe a second one, but left the others as random
- one or two where people have named pretty much everything in big systems
- a fair few which are just using the random names

There's like, what, 20 default names for new stations? 30?

Way more than that. All four of my ports have random names, and an Inara search suggests three of them have unique names, and one has a name which is only duplicated once elsewhere in the bubble.

Odyssey settlements seem to use a slightly more themed list of names, and tend to be built more than ports, but even then they have enough different suffixes that there's a lot of variety - again, all of mine seem to either have unique names or names only repeated once elsewhere.

 

[Macros Black]

Yes

 

[Greasetrap42]

5k ARX, 4 bucks, or the equivalent of 13 weeks of play, for every single outpost. Approximately three stations PER YEAR. You got a fully developped system? Prepare to pay more than the game itself was worth at launch.

You could say the exact same thing about paint jobs. Why do players (including myself) bother? And why multiple paint jobs per ship? What difference does it make? For the price of a drink at Starbucks I can get a paint job or name a colony station.

I purchased custom names for the important key stations in my systems. Not every settlement and outpost.

 

[Alec Turner]

Unbelievably (I just checked) I’ve earned over $700 from submitting screenshots and videos for JustAbout.com Elite Dangerous reward challenges. Since that money came from Frontier I liked the idea of completing the circle, treating it all as Monopoly money and just feeding it back into ARX again. So yeah, I’ve named everything in my system and have really enjoyed building some character into the place. So far I have:

The Happy Bottom Riding Club (after Pancho's place where Chuck Yeager used to hang out)
Slam’n Sammy's (a tunnel racing installation and bar named after the rocket dragster driver Slam'n Sammy Miller)
Piceous Elicitations (an extraction settlement in a lava field)
Piceous Azafahrt Volcanic Microbrewery (a settlement nearby to that where the Piceous Cobble is used to brew a pretty gassy beer)
Johanne's Lantern (for my wife)
Crater Edge Spectations (a large tourist settlement perched on the edge of a spectacular crater)
Camp Bucky (a construction yard devoted to SRV racing)
Devil's Tower (right on top of a mountain which is now the spitting image of the mountain in Close Encounters)
Katchame Ifaya Khan (an orbital construction platform which is moving at 400m/s and is impossible to land on)
Drakhy Point (a large surface port named after the founder of the Buckyball Racing Club which will also serve as the finish line for the forthcoming "Drakhyr Rally" - a word play on Dakar)

As you can probably tell I’ve been having a LOT of fun with this!

 

[GroG79]

Yes

nice list

 

[Astrofizzix]

I’ve generally been naming any Corliss, Orbis, Ocellus, and T3 planetary ports I place.

One named after my cat:
Jellybean Orbital

One named after a popular space station from another game that shall not be named here:
Port Olisar

And two names that came to mind at random:
Starlight Gateway

Named off of the green planet it’s on:
Emerald City

 

[Xenia_K]

I just custom name the big stations. By the time I've built them my free Arx is usually back at the 5k mark anyway.

Note that you can also re-roll the name generator if you really don't like the name of something. There is a limit on the number of times you can do that for each one (5 times)

eeeeh - NO!
The re-rolls are (from my experience) unlimited, the 5 times renaming only counts if you use a rerolled name and change it later - so you are limited to 5 times renaming, not to 5 rerolls....

 

[Alec Turner]

Check out this list of all the colonised stations in spansh:

Elite: Dangerous Index

spansh.co.uk

Looks to me like a fair number of people are naming.

"Bag End" and "Hobbiton"

When I have more time I need to spend an hour scrolling this, see what people have come up with!

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Unbelievably (I just checked) I’ve earned over $700 from submitting screenshots and videos for JustAbout.com Elite Dangerous reward challenges.

I always knew you were a paid shill . How does it feel to have it out in the open ?

 

[James Razor]

Yes, I named mainly large Starports.

For example, I have named 2 Starports after my nieces.

But I am now somewhat more selective in naming stuff, as the cost adds up fast when you build a lot of things and as such, I will reserve it for 'special occasions'.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Yes

Wow.

 

[Raedawn]

HIP 55377 is being turned into a single educational facility: Edgar Allan Poe University

• Various Colleges exist
• Campus Security Services
• and more
• the naming of all the system assets is an ongoing effort.

The system build is not fully completed yet.

 

[ZULU OSCAR OSCAR LIMA]

Various Systems that I have all have their Tier 2 and Tier 3 Orbital Constructions (Ports) Named with Custom Names.
Yes, I've spent more on Naming Space Stations than some Players have on Ships.

I have a Naming Convention for the Ports, and as such, I have basically got a Massive Pool of Names to choose from.
All of my Tier 2 and Tier 3 Space Stations have a Prefix (UNSS - United Nations Space Station), and then a Name.

The Name is taken from every Official Azur Lane Ship currently available.
This means that any World War II Ship that hasn't been introduced into Azur Lane, is basically not going to be used.
This also means that some Azur Lane Ship (Character) Names that never seen the waves in real life will also have a chance to pop up.



I intend to have enough Systems to pay for ongoing costs to Fleet Carriers, so, that's going to be a VERY LONG List indeed.
I estimate that I may find myself spending some £200 - £400 (GBP) on just Naming Space Stations.
It's for this reason that all Installations currently are using the Random Name Generator in the Game, otherwise I would be spending a lot more.



I will add a note right here though:
In the Unlikely Event that a Developer ever reads this post, I would like to make you aware that you shot yourselves in the foot.
So, MISSED OPPORTUNITY - Installations are less likely to be visited, so, why should naming them still cost 5,000 ARX?
Personally, while retaining the Cost of Tier 2 and Tier 3 Space Station Name Change Costs, make Smaller things like Installations cheaper.
If Installations cost 1,000 ARX to Rename to a Custom Name, I would be Renaming absolutely every one that I've got.
This means, you've missed out on 3,000 ARX minimum per System that I own (I own a fair amount of them, and this number will grow over time).

 

[Lykanthropias]

I think it's not too bad, I just name stations if they are of high value/significance or if I want to honor someone I know and put their name into the game. For example I placed a settlement in a way that the landing pad is exactly where my friend had his very first first footfall and of course that place is named after him. Other than that the random name generator is not too bad considering you have infinite rerolls for the name, the 5 changes you have a merely to actually submit the name. Unless I want a fully themed system I don't see a reason to name everything I build with a custom name.

 

[Xenia_K]

I name the main stations (T2 - T3 I dont build) in my systems with the pre-fix [BPCL] (Black Pearl Cruises Ltd, my Squad] and a selected name, e.g. Smeltshop 2 (for a refinery coriolis).
For the T1 Outposts (mostly) and all the space & surface installations, the random generator for me is just fine. OK, sometimes you have to throw the dice some 50 times to get some decent naming, but it works....
One time the random generator even put in the Cdr Name of my mate which helped building that specific outpost