I'm hoping eventually we'll be able to name our ships, as do many others, but I figure when they're doing that they should add in one little other feature as an afterthought:
Serial Numbers.
Each ship should have a unique serial number. The basic idea is simple enough, some letters and numbers denoting ship model type and production number (assuming any ship you buy is new, the numbers would keep going up as time goes on). So a Cobra MKIII might be something like C3-73482 or whatever.
But, with a little more effort, it wouldn't be hard to create a system that gives a bit more information.
For example, place of manufacture. Now, I don't know if the dev team have an idea of everywhere that has a Cobra production plant or not (or if they're manufactured in the stations themselves???), but it wouldn't be hard to establish. So a sub code could indicate where it was produced.
So for a ship made in Sol in January of 3300, it might go something like C3-SL-00A-73482 (Cobra MK III, Sol System plant, 3300 January, production number). January listed as "A" to avoid more numbers, months being A to L, and with 00 we're not going to have to worry about cycling out for a hundred years
Now, granted this is a completely useless add on in game, but it's the kind of flavor some geeks would die for And of course, for those of us who fall in love with a single ship long term, that serial number might as well be a second name (Not dissimilar to the Enterprise, and how everyone recognizes NCC 1701). No doubt people will shorten it down to whatever is relevant, like the production year and number (00A-73482), since that would indicate how long they've had it for without getting it blown up.
Serial Numbers.
Each ship should have a unique serial number. The basic idea is simple enough, some letters and numbers denoting ship model type and production number (assuming any ship you buy is new, the numbers would keep going up as time goes on). So a Cobra MKIII might be something like C3-73482 or whatever.
But, with a little more effort, it wouldn't be hard to create a system that gives a bit more information.
For example, place of manufacture. Now, I don't know if the dev team have an idea of everywhere that has a Cobra production plant or not (or if they're manufactured in the stations themselves???), but it wouldn't be hard to establish. So a sub code could indicate where it was produced.
So for a ship made in Sol in January of 3300, it might go something like C3-SL-00A-73482 (Cobra MK III, Sol System plant, 3300 January, production number). January listed as "A" to avoid more numbers, months being A to L, and with 00 we're not going to have to worry about cycling out for a hundred years
Now, granted this is a completely useless add on in game, but it's the kind of flavor some geeks would die for
And of course, for those of us who fall in love with a single ship long term, that serial number might as well be a second name (Not dissimilar to the Enterprise, and how everyone recognizes NCC 1701). No doubt people will shorten it down to whatever is relevant, like the production year and number (00A-73482), since that would indicate how long they've had it for without getting it blown up.
