community goal to rename systems that have "stellar designation"

[ImpeccableTaste]

For example there is an alliance system with over 16 billion inhabitants. It's name is "G 123-16." And there are many more examples like this.
Any system with a significant population should have a proper name not just a stellar designation used to catalogue and archive stars. It's not only unrealistic, it's boring, and difficult to remember.
There should be a community goal to create names for these systems. Obviously with guidelines for good taste and suitability.

 

[yelboc]

For better or for worse, thats what its called in Real Life:

G 123-16

Don't think you stand much chance of getting RL catalogued stars re-named...

 

[ImpeccableTaste]

For better or for worse, thats what its called in Real Life:

G 123-16

Don't think you stand much chance of getting RL catalogued stars re-named...

That's kind of the entire point.
As soon as something becomes inhabited, the inhabitants would give it a proper name. G 123-16 is a placeholder name because the star is not significant at this point in time.

 

[metatheurgist]

I shall call it Gizeig.

 

[Northpin]

I shall call it Gizeig.

I know what you did there

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That's kind of the entire point.
As soon as something becomes inhabited, the inhabitants would give it a proper name. G 123-16 is a placeholder name because the star is not significant at this point in time.

Similarly for planets - in real life we've got as far as 22,000 named asteroids, whereas in most Elite Dangerous systems even the inhabited planets still just have a systematic name.

None of the planets in Achenar have names, just the moons of Achenar 6. Lave only has two planets in the entire system and they've only bothered to name one of them. Most of the ones which are named the names come from FE2.

They don't all need unique names - half the planets in the Empire are probably called "Duval's Glory" or "Duval's Claim" or something - or necessarily even permanent names (obviously when a new faction takes over it'll rename all the obscure moons after its leadership)

 

[Bottom Hat]

Would you like to live in Kunti? Or in Two Ladies, for that matter?

I'd rather live in G 268-47 than Kunti.

 

[Red Anders]

I sold a shedload of painite in Kunti about a month ago. Lovely place.

 

[Bottom Hat]

I sold a shedload of painite in Kunti about a month ago. Lovely place.

Did you get right up in the station?

 

[Red Anders]

Did you get right up in the station?

Same procedure as usual, just eased in carefully.

 

[Sapyx]

I personally find it more unbelievable that planets would remain un-named, since people would identify with a plane much more than a star system.Take the Earth-like in the Duamta system, for example. Being right next door to Earth, it would have been colonized in the first wave of generation ships, over a thousand years ago. Yet no-one, in all that time, ever re-named the planet beyond "Duamta 4".

I suppose the lore explanation is that, for such planets (and systems), the founding colonists could not agree on a new name, so used the interim catalogue designation in the meantime; soon, people got used to using the interim name and changing it never became a priority. This might explain one or two such cases, but doesn't explain why there are so many of them throughout human space.

Of course, the out-of-game reason has more to do with money. Kickstarters paid a considerable amount of money to buy the right to name stuff: £40 for an NPC, £500 for a space station, £750 for a planet, £3000 for a "frontier system" and £5000 for a "central system". So if someone wanted to name Duamta 4, they should have paid their £750 six years ago. It wouldn't seem fair to just give away that naming right to someone now, for free.

As a general rule, whenever Frontier renamed a star system, they chose a procedurally-generated star system to rename (such as Duamta), rather than a real-world-star-catalogue star system. They wanted the starmap to look as much like a real-world starmap as possible.

 

[Hooplah]

ED astronomy is pretty accurate. I guess most just for fun players don't know that until they take an advanced college course in astronomy then are amazed seeing the detail Frontier added to ED. All those numbers and letters per a system name actually mean something. YouTube has videos about them.

In human conflicts only conquerors change the name of the civilizations they conquered then rewrite history to suit them. Maybe those who populated or conquered G 123-16 like the name. If one wants to change it then one has to conquer it rewriting history. Then again the Frontier Devs like the name for accuracy in the galaxy.

May I suggest something more productive as in pledging to A. Langly-Duval for 4 weeks to get some Imperial Hammer rail guns? They might come in handy later conquering a system.

Regards

 

[Dr. Lexus]

For example there is an alliance system with over 16 billion inhabitants. It's name is "G 123-16." And there are many more examples like this.
Any system with a significant population should have a proper name not just a stellar designation used to catalogue and archive stars. It's not only unrealistic, it's boring, and difficult to remember.
There should be a community goal to create names for these systems. Obviously with guidelines for good taste and suitability.

yeah lets bring back Veliaze

 

[varonica]

Similarly for planets - in real life we've got as far as 22,000 named asteroids, whereas in most Elite Dangerous systems even the inhabited planets still just have a systematic name.

Because they were named when they were discovered, the discoverer has the naming rights, but it does become hard when you are working on automated systems that scan thousands of stars at a time. Arguably G 123-16 is the name we gave it, it's actual procedural name in ED would be entirely different, however naming stars and planets is fraught with problems, there are players who go around demanding stars, planets and station be renamed because they think the names are silly or offensive, such as the thread about "Stapled Peacock Flesh."

I am sure that FDEV don't want to get involved in arguments over names so it's probably not going to happen, and that's all apart from the fact that many kickstarters spent a lot of money to name stars, planets and stations as already mentioned and now we get to do it for free? having said that, stars that have names in real life should reflect those names, but maybe in the far future when people travel all over the galaxy they wouldn't be so attached to local names and prefer designations that better identify bodies, so Achenar 1 would be a prefereable name for people who travel the galaxy a lot because it identifies the location of the planet in the system, but locals of course might have their own name for the planet that wouldn't be reflected in navigation systems because, lets face it, out of tens of thousand of inhabited planets and moons how many would simply be called "Earth," "Earth 2," "New Earth," "Earth Beta" or one of many other variations on Earth.

Basically names of inhabited planets and moons would simply have no real meaning for most long term space travelers unless they were exceptional locations, such as Alpha Centauri, really humans have little imagination when it comes to naming things. Oh I'm not saying they can't think of amusing and interesting names for things, such as the aforementioned "Stapled Peacock Flesh", but in the real world that would have been over-ruled by the governing council and something boring, forgettable and ultimately aleady used many times everywhere in the galaxy would have been selected from a similar list of boring, forgettable and overused names. But Achenar 1, for instance will always be Achenar 1 to all space travelers!

 

[Maolagin]

They don't all need unique names - half the planets in the Empire are probably called "Duval's Glory" or "Duval's Claim" or something - or necessarily even permanent names (obviously when a new faction takes over it'll rename all the obscure moons after its leadership)

Yep, that's my head cannon too. Different government renaming the system every other century, Universal Cartographics hasn't got time for that. The named systems are strictly those where a name was settled early on and stuck through the years.

As a general rule, whenever Frontier renamed a star system, they chose a procedurally-generated star system to rename (such as Duamta), rather than a real-world-star-catalogue star system. They wanted the starmap to look as much like a real-world starmap as possible.

For what it's worth, there are a great many named systems in the Bubble that are real world catalog stars, if you look at the system information. This is of course a natural consequence of the fact that the large majority of cataloged stars are relatively nearby. The procgen stars are mostly there to fill out the proper density of dim dwarf classes, since they're hard to see and thus underrepresented in the catalogs.

 

[BradHann]

I'm curious as to how a CG as they currently exist would go about getting anything renamed.

 

[Danieros]

I'd assume as soon as there is even a remote interest in a system, it would get a proper name besides its stellar designation.

For a system to go all the way into having a proper human presence and structures, but not a name, maybe there are very rigid protocols and bureaucracy?

For a system to support 16 billion people and still not have a name, there must be some serious multi-generation legal battles going on.

 

[varonica]

For a system to support 16 billion people and still not have a name, there must be some serious multi-generation legal battles going on.

Who says it doesn't have a name that the locals call it, but why should the pilots federation, an interstellar group, change stellar designation every time a tin pot system decides to change their local name?

 

[Zieman]

lets bring back Veliaze

This is a good idea.
But it should stop at that.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I am sure that FDEV don't want to get involved in arguments over names so it's probably not going to happen, and that's all apart from the fact that many kickstarters spent a lot of money to name stars, planets and stations as already mentioned and now we get to do it for free?

Oh, I'm definitely not suggesting that players should be able to name them outside of specific situations (it's occasionally been given out as a prize since, and I think that's fine) but it should be something they throw the procedural generators at.

Witch Head got a lot easier to talk about when they renamed all the inhabited systems to have actual names - and they'd only been populated a few months for that. Catalogue names like that have the really big disadvantage for the practical space traveller that they're easy to confuse - if I say to meet up in Gru Flyou <...> and you mishear and think I said Gria Flyou, you'll be thousands of LY out. [1]

Just basic things like "which of the ten similar icy moons of this gas giant are we going to again?" get much easier if they have real names. Even if they're just local names, barely a couple of decades old, the locals are going to call them that when giving you a mission, so it's in your interests if UC lists them too.

[1] That'd be an interesting trivia question: what are the galaxy's two systems with the greatest LY distance whose names only have one letter difference (add, remove or change)? Byoo Aob -> Byoo Aoc is ~38000 LY but it's probably possible to do better.