News Commander Names, Private Forums & Thread Prefixes

[Cmdr M.G.Dangerous]

I am Backer #00001 and I choose the name, Shepard Fox Malcolm Reynolds Han Solo Ace Rimmer Picard Starbuck Adama Skywalker The Doctor Kirk Biggles Maverick Bond Smith Jones Bob Dave White Black!

Seriously though, we all love our sci-fi, and wanting to sport our favourite character names is the sincerest form of appreciation, and will stand as a source of pride for the possessor. All Except for Jar Jar Binks, SyFy, & London Tipton

Or to put it another way:
For Tarrants sake people Gan get the Del out of my Villa, and Servelan as Slave to a different master, Orac-cept that we we'd love to Cally our avatars with some significance. Gan you get the Jenna of what I'm saying? I've Travis'd long & far to come to the realisation that you've just got to be Zen about these things.

Yours sincerely Cmdr London Tipton Jar Jar Olson Twins Zak & Cody Brady & Boomer Alex Russo Binks

 

[Swan]

Hey all; not sure if it's been answered elsewhere but can't find it on the search.

I submitted my chosen commander name on day one, but then submitted it again a few days later (thinking that it hadn't submitted properly).

Does the first submission take precedence?

TIA

 

[Toebs]

What nonsense. If your NPC name is, say, Richard Morris (as mine is), and you see an NPC called Richard Morris, what does it matter whether FD generated the name by gluing together "Richard" and "Morris", or by picking "Richard Morris" from a list. In both cases the end result was that I saw my NPC name.

I suspect the frequency of this occurring due to the infinite number of NPCs is extremely low - such that you yourself certainly will never see it happen and indeed almost no one else will; moreover, and this to me is the key issue, I think what some thought they were paying for - and wanted to have, which is why they paid - was that the name they chose would belong and always belong to a character. They would *know* that somewhere out there was the name they choose - of their wife, their son, whoever it might be who is special to them.

Hey all; not sure if it's been answered elsewhere but can't find it on the search.

I submitted my chosen commander name on day one, but then submitted it again a few days later (thinking that it hadn't submitted properly).

Does the first submission take precedence?

I understand that the answer is no; that whatever you have set on 4th Feb will be used as your commander name, regardless of whatever it was set to before or how often it was changed.

 

[Russ]

Does the first submission take precedence?

It is when you pledged that determines where you sit in the list, not when you submitted the name.

 

[Mobius]

What nonsense. If your NPC name is, say, Richard Morris (as mine is), and you see an NPC called Richard Morris, what does it matter whether FD generated the name by gluing together "Richard" and "Morris", or by picking "Richard Morris" from a list. In both cases the end result was that I saw my NPC name.

Sorry you’re wrong because using a combination of Richard and Morris along with 25000 other people you will probably never actually see the two names together, you may if you’re lucky Robert harries.
But unless your full name is used in its entirety there is going to be a slim chance of you or anyone seeing your full name.

 

[Cmdr M.G.Dangerous]

I suspect the frequency of this occurring due to the infinite number of NPCs is extremely low - such that you yourself certainly will never see it happen and indeed almost no one else will; moreover, and this to me is the key issue, I think what some thought they were paying for - and wanted to have, which is why they paid - was that the name they chose would belong and always belong to a character. They would *know* that somewhere out there was the name they choose - of their wife, their son, whoever it might be who is special to them.

This is something I have to agree with Toebs on. If names are broken up then you could waiting on a, for example 15,000x15,000 chance of your chosen name actually being reformed & used. If you purposely chose a name of personal significance, it was because you wanted to not too infrequently have that name in use in the ED universe. In fact I would hope that whole pledged for names are given an increased chance of being used than generated ones.

 

[Mr Credit]

Pumpkin is sort of orange - Commander Pumpkin. HTH.

Damn!! I'm going to have to change mine now!!!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

This is something I have to agree with Toebs on. If names are broken up then you could waiting on a, for example 15,000x15,000 chance of your chosen name actually being reformed & used. If you purposely chose a name of personal significance, it was because you wanted to not too infrequently have that name in use in the ED universe. In fact I would hope that whole pledged for names are given an increased chance of being used than generated ones.

Agreeing with Toebs? Isn't that against the rules?

The number of kickstarted NPC names will be what - 20k-25k? Given the size of the Elite Ooniverse, that is almost certainly not going to be enough. So there will probably be some sort of procedural name generation going on, to get them up to the number of names they think they need - whatever that is. They may well choose to have a firstname concatenated with lastname thing. If 'our' NPC names also get put into that, when they fit the model, then is saves FD from having to think up quite so many.

However, if your NPC name does not fit the firstname/secondname paradigm, they they will have to create a list of 'unsplittable names', in order to fulfil their promise. SO despite claims that they 'have not decided yet', I think it is a given that some names, at least, will be unsplittable. Perhaps they will put all the names into that pile, even where they were splittable, so generic names like mine might come from both routes.

 

[Toebs]

It is when you pledged that determines where you sit in the list, not when you submitted the name.

Well, mainly.

If your name collides with another and so you have to choose again, but your second choice has already been taken in the frist round, then your pledge order doesn't matter - you don't get your second choice.

 

[Styggron]

Hey all; not sure if it's been answered elsewhere but can't find it on the search.

I submitted my chosen commander name on day one, but then submitted it again a few days later (thinking that it hadn't submitted properly).

Does the first submission take precedence?

TIA

I believe it will be done in the KS pledging order so your position in there is what gives you the precedence so by re typing your name you don't loose your place in the queue. This is my understanding.

 

[Mack]

Not sure exactly how it's being done, but from guesswork I would say something like the following (well maybe how i'd do it...! - Feel free to rip apart the logic!)

1. Order the list by KS pledge order
2. Scan list for reserved names (swearing, Jameson etc) and blank offending entries, thus marking them as must re-select.
3. Blank all dupes except the first occurance, thus marking them as must re-select.
4. Mark all before first blank as locked in
5. Mark all after first blank as pending approval (except blanks)
6. If no blanks left proceed to 7 else Upon any blank being re-submitted Goto 2
7. List should now be fully complete and locked in !

 

[Jack Schitt]

However, if your NPC name does not fit the firstname/secondname paradigm, they they will have to create a list of 'unsplittable names', in order to fulfil their promise. SO despite claims that they 'have not decided yet', I think it is a given that some names, at least, will be unsplittable. Perhaps they will put all the names into that pile, even where they were splittable, so generic names like mine might come from both routes.

This was touched on in another thread, which links to an earlier post from Michael: "It may change but generally names would be displayed in full [...] although it is possible we might split them as well for additional variety."

Having thought about this some more I'm fairly convinced that FD will not split user-provided NPC names, not only to avoid the Hunt / Mike Head situation but simply to reduce the manhours required to go through 20K+ names. They're already going to have to reject swears, IP infringements and other problematic names that can't be reliably excised algorithmically; having to check all combinations as well would be next to impossible in a reasonable time frame.

I suspect they'll use three naming databases.

• A fixed database of cleansed, user-provided names.
• A fixed database of FD-provided names (Alex Ryder, Rafe Zetter etc. plus any vanity names from FD staff).
• A database of firstname / middle name / middle initial / surname combinations similar to that used by Frontier and FFE, but with a much larger pool and much better algorithms for stringing it all together. I expect to see names of Middle Eastern and Asian form out there too, not just the mainly westernised names that were the staple of earlier games.

I'd actually be quite surprised if someone at FD hasn't been experimenting with such a routine already.

Of course it's possible for common names submitted by users to appear out of the random database as well. I expect there'll be a lot of Bob Joneses out there. And while the randomly generated names could be trivially filtered against the user database to avoid ambiguity, this could arguably affect realism. Just because there's a Jane Smith in the user database should that mean there's only one Jane Smith in the whole galaxy? Seems unlikely.

A simple way to resolve this is to have names from the user NPC pool appear in a slightly different colour and/or font than those from the randomiser, so you can instantly spot your NPC among the crowd.

And for anyone who thinks that breaks the realism of the universe (what's so special about user-chosen NPCs?), just have the option to turn off the colouring or font-changing in the client.

 

[Solly]

Not sure exactly how it's being done, but from guesswork I would say something like the following (well maybe how i'd do it...! - Feel free to rip apart the logic!)

1. Order the list by KS pledge order
2. Scan list for reserved names (swearing, Jameson etc) and blank offending entries, thus marking them as must re-select.
3. Blank all dupes except the first occurance, thus marking them as must re-select.
4. Mark all before first blank as locked in
5. Mark all after first blank as pending approval (except blanks)
6. If no blanks left proceed to 7 else Upon any blank being re-submitted Goto 2
7. List should now be fully complete and locked in !

From the app: "After these approvals are concluded the form will be unlocked and we will accept new submissions on a first come first served basis."

It looks to me like if your name is not approved you go onto a first come first served list. Not a first pledged first served basis.

 

[Toebs]

Not sure exactly how it's being done, but from guesswork I would say something like the following (well maybe how i'd do it...! - Feel free to rip apart the logic!)

1. Order the list by KS pledge order
2. Scan list for reserved names (swearing, Jameson etc) and blank offending entries, thus marking them as must re-select.
3. Blank all dupes except the first occurance, thus marking them as must re-select.
4. Mark all before first blank as locked in
5. Mark all after first blank as pending approval (except blanks)
6. If no blanks left proceed to 7 else Upon any blank being re-submitted Goto 2
7. List should now be fully complete and locked in !

If you were an earlier pledger, but your first choice was a dupe and so you have to choose again and your second choice was already taken in the first round by someone who pledged after you, doesn't that violate pledge-first, serve-first?

 

[Mack]

If you were an earlier pledger, but your first choice was a dupe and so you have to choose again and your second choice was already taken in the first round by someone who pledged after you, doesn't that violate pledge-first, serve-first?

Hence point 4 & 5 in my logic. Names after you would not be locked in until you were locked in.

However,

From the app: "After these approvals are concluded the form will be unlocked and we will accept new submissions on a first come first served basis."

It looks to me like if your name is not approved you go onto a first come first served list. Not a first pledged first served basis.

Does indeed suggest that what you say may be the case, so really all we got was a chance at choosing a name if we got there first.

 

[Toebs]

Hence point 4 & 5 in my logic. Names after you would not be locked in until you were locked in.

Yes. I missed that.

However,

Does indeed suggest that what you say may be the case, so really all we got was a chance at choosing a name if we got there first.

Correct, as far as I understand it. The current proposed mechanism has been described by Michael Brooks and it is your mechanism, but without 4 & 5.

A drawback with the mechanism you proposed is the repeated iteration of asking for new names when conflicts occur. I proposed a window, where you only ask the next 50 or so conflicting pledgers for their new choices, so that the latest pledgers don't keep being asked for new names.

 

[Void Sun]

FD only ever promised to 'add your name to the naming database' no promise was ever given to whether you will see that name in the universe. What if your name gets allocated to a ship yard on a gas giant satellite moon in sector 22,-15. The probabilities of you coming across your name are infinitesimal.

The best option is if FD add a feature where KS backers can search for their name in the universe database and it tells them where they are.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Complete list ...

I might be able to share this info with you next week, depending on how jaded I feel after going through them all.

Oh yes! If we could receive by email the full listing in Excel format, that would be too cool

 

[Mack]

A drawback with the mechanism you proposed is the repeated iteration of asking for new names when conflicts occur. I proposed a window, where you only ask the next 50 or so conflicting pledgers for their new choices, so that the latest pledgers don't keep being asked for new names.

I was thinking about that, and thought maybe giving people the chance to pick 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,5th choices when asked to re-select, it should reduce the iterations (and requirements to re-ask the same people multiple times)
Since as has already been said, the (most) popular names will most likely have gone to the early pledgers in round the first run through on Monday.
It is of course though fully dependant on everybody in order being locked in, and any failure there does mean the whole list below the first offender is then in flux lol.

 

[WeeJocky]

So the names are granted in order of whomever pledged earlier; what if we changed our pledge at some point?

I chose a real name that might have been chosen by a few others. I did pledge very early though (within the first day), however later in the process I changed my pledge (pretty much the final day). So would that make me high on the priority list or would I have been pushed down to the very bottom?