Named Planets

[Danieros]

So, from my fairly limited experience in the game, I've never stumbled on a named planet. They were always related to the system name (besides obvious ones like our planets in Sol).

Yet, here I am in the Sigma Hydri system and I find an ELW planet named "Realm", which has a station oddly named "Damnclown's Funland". Doesn't seem to be something automatically generated but rather manually changed.

Is there a reason for this? Have you come across other named planets? Looking for some discussion.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Some were named by FD. Some where named by backers. It was one of the backer bonuses if you pledged to a certain level.

 

[Sapyx]

Planet names, like star names, come from a variety of sources. Unlike stars, we haven't given "proper names" to any planet in any star system other than our own, so the only "in real life" planet names in ED are the ones in Sol system.

Planets in "FE2 legacy systems", that either have old FE2 procedurally-generated names or are one of the couple dozen in-real-life stars that were on the old FE2 starmap, will usually carry over the procedurally-generated planet name that was given to them by the FE2 random name generator; this basically picked a planet name from a fairly short list: New Africa, New America, New California, Capitol, Diamond, Topaz, Emerald, Experiment, Conversion (those last two were reserved for terraformed worlds), as well as "XXXX's world" where "XXXX" was selected from a fairly short list of available names: Amundsen, Kawasaki, Miller, Duval, etc; "World" also had a few possible substitutes, like "Colony" and "Eden". With a relatively large number of planets and a small list of possible planet-name combinations, it was not uncommon for two or more planets in FE2 to have the same name; this is why there are four planets named "New California" in ED. There were a couple of other hand-carved systems in FE2, like Eta Cassiopiae, with hand-named planets in them.

Some planets and star systems in ED have been manually named by FD for reasons of their own. Every object in the 17 Draconis system, for example, is named; the ELW is called "Paradiso". This system was created like this by ED to record a promotional video for a game event, and they wanted everything in the video to have a cool-looking name.

Finally, we have the backer names. Early backers of the game could buy the right to name stars, planets, space stations etc.. Some of these are obviously placed by backers, even if the derivation of the name is not obvious at first glance. In the Bast system, for example, the only planet is the terraformed ELW called "THFC est1882", which sounds like a weird catalogue code until you realise (or it is pointed out to you) that the Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club was established in 1882. It should perhaps also be pointed out that this football club's home ground was (until recently) White Hart Lane, so it is not a coincidence that the only space station in this system is named "Hart Station".

 

[marx]

FD have also at times handed out the ability to name some planets to contest winners. I don't think there's a list of these anywhere, but I do remember that Synuefe MU-V c16-0 had two planets (Rich and Aust) named this way. See this thread; it was one of those rare times that a developer actually posted in this subforum. No need to drink now, though, 8 months ago doesn't count.

 

[Danieros]

Interesting! So there are many possible sources of planet naming:

- Kickstarter backer
- FE2 carryover
- Contest prize
- Used by FDev

Wish we could know the reason for a naming, since they're all important events. Thanks for all the information.

 

[Sapyx]

The old FE2 planets often have some lore around them - FE2 even came with a "Gazetteer" book that told the lore backstory of several dozen of the more significant planets in the game.

The problem with the player-named planets in ED, is that FD isn't really at liberty to write a backstory for the planet that makes sense in the in-game universe, without risking offending the backer who paid good money to add the names.

Take Bast as an example. We could write a story about how it got those names, preferably a story that doesn't involve being named after a 1500-year-old and presumably long-defunct soccer club. How about this one I made up earlier? "The colony was originally founded in 2289 by a dozen survivors from an ore freighter that crashlanded there, the "EST 1882", owned by the Tau Horologii Freight Consortium and captained by Bernadette Hart.". But would the backer who paid 500 pounds to allocate these names, be happy with this backstory effectively removing the tribute to their football team they had intended to create?