Fun with the ship names

Yep.

More Elite. It probably shows with the number of Internet Spaceship themed posts lately that I've been enjoying my time back in the game since the reset, with my head in the spaceship pilot seat most of the time ... even if I'm not actually in game as much as it seems. What can I say, it's a game that caught the imagination and I find it quite restful plying my trade amongst the stars.

After giving the current internet spaceship a proper name (It's the ICV Lisa Kelly after one of the Ice Road Trucker people), I want to give the other ships names too ...

But first .... how many ships ? What do they look like ? I found this pic :

As always, click for bigger .... although you might actually like to open it out into another window or tab for later reference. Maybe not if you have a limited amount of download though because it is a very big picture (14MB if Google hasn't made it smaller)

I also saw the video I'm about to link, which really does show off the ships pretty well. Here's the ship comparison video ! Good video.

The ships I already have are the starter ships :
Sidewinder - Humility because it was a return to humble beginnings.
Hauler - Dignity after that Deacon Blue song.
Adder - Algebraic.
Cobra Mk3 - Ranger, with it marking my first forays to the edge of the populated bubble.
Cobra Mk4 - Pathfinder, as a follow on from the Ranger.

And I'm now in the Lisa Kelly, a Type 6 space truck. Tool for the trade and that one is back to being unarmed. If you carry weapons in the game, the added weight and power requirement (leading to a heavier power supply) mean a lower hyperspace jump range which means it takes longer to get to where you're going. And there isn't much point in getting guns for the space truck as it's not fast or agile enough to bring them to bear and doesn't last long enough to win the fights.

It's always wise to pick your battles but sometimes you have to pick .... no battles. :-D.

There are another 3 space trucks and a trio of liner ships that I'll get ... I have names lined up for the Keelback - ICV Art Burke after a rather combative Ice Road Trucker. The Type 7 will be the Alex Dewey after another pair of Ice Road Truckers and the Type 9 will be named after Darrell Ward, a very colourful trucker from the series who was lost to us in an aircraft accident.

The three liners ? They're the Dolphin, Orca and the Beluga. Let's see ... I take some inspiration from the luxury liners that sail our seas and in particular, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. So I think our internet liner spaceships will be the Queen Karen, Queen Skye and Queen Jenny. I can't see me using those ships very much though as the passenger mechanics sound ... annoying. But they do look gorgeous though.

There are a series of fighty ships as well which I won't use too much, I'll come back to fightyness in the game later on when I can afford to wreck in the Federal Corvette. It'll be fun to zoom around in some of the smaller ones though.

Let's see :
Eagle - will be the Elizabeth Sparrow. She's one of the characters of the Discord servers, a small and very feisty lady who keeps us men in our place.
Imperial Eagle (a variant) - if the Eagle is Liz, then the Imperial Eagle should be another from the Discords. Perhaps the Quotation Raven.
Imperial Courier - and following the theme, this should be the Kaisha Louise.
Moving up from there are the Vipers, Mk III and Mk IV. Following the Chrissa discord theme, these have to be the ultimate in moderators, Lord Jms and Lord Nikmurder with their ban hammers.
The medium fighter ship is the Vulture with a pair of rather large guns. I quite enjoy reading the online tech news site called The Register, who have the Vulture as their prime symbol. So my Vulture can only be called Registrar.
And then there is the Fer-De-Lance - ultimate of the pure fighter craft outside of the chunky Federation ships. Not sure here, although there is a character from Chrissa's Discord who I haven't mentioned yet - Lady Monowheat.

The probably daft thing though is that while I'd like to collect all of these ships, I'm not likely to fly many of them very much. I'll leave the fighty ships until I have a battle wagon and I won't indulge in the awkward passenger carrying much. But it'll be curious to take them out of the station at least once.

The next ship was going to be Discovery but I'll name the Asp Explorer after Chrissa instead. It'll be Chrissa's Protatoe. I raised the idea in stream chat earlier and the response was to pick something potato like. And ....

There's an Asp I owned in a previous character. I believe that means the smaller Asp Scout just has to be the Lauren Radderss after the other streamer I enjoy watching.

Following that theme, there are another two exploration oriented ships. These are the Diamondback Scout and Diamondback Explorer. After enjoying their Factorio series, which involved exploring a Death world and cutting out their place in it, I believe these should be the KatherineOfSpace (actually ...ofSky) and the Nilaus.

Next up are the Federal ships, which are chunky combat ships. We have the :

Federal Assault Ship - Commander Warspite
Federal Drop Ship - Captain Hood
(After a pair of celebrated Royal Navy warships)
Federal Gun Ship - after his highly enjoyable series on Cosmoteer, (here's the playlist link) this shall be the Commodore Elysium. This ship must have big lasers in honour of EE's Chalice battlecruiser.
Federal Corvette - there can only be one name for the flagship combat ship and that's the Admiral Nelson.

After the Asp, the next ship will be the multirole Python .... which has to be named after my favourite of the Monty's, Michael Palin. And the biggest and most flexible multirole ship is the Anaconda which shall be named ... the Sarah Taylor. Perhaps not the most fitting name ! Sarah Taylor aka Squirt is the England ladies wicket keeper, who I think is the best keeper in the world at the moment. She did her part and then some in the World Cup final yesterday.

And then the last couple of ships are the pretty Imperial cruisers :

Chocolate edition Clipper and Chocolate edition Cutter :

(Paint jobs not actually available in game !)

If I gave a couple of ships above names based on Chrissa's mods, I can't leave out another fella. I believe Lord Silvernightwing would be appropriate for the Clipper of spoilers and other nastiness from Radderss' stream chat. Silver's a lovely mod, strict yep ... but a good egg too.

That Cutter though ... I think this one will be the Baron Stephen when it arrives for .... reasons :-D. Someone else spent lots of time in the original Elite as well as me when we were kids !

I'm sure I'll lose a few of these ships over my time in game so there's definitely room for more names, like calling ships names like the Luth Curmal (definitely!) and the Admiral Stone. Perhaps a bit of Doc FairosMakani and Krinza, Npralie, Tufflan/Camilla, Makai, Fubb, Zaphyr and Souleater from my Warcraft days too.

Post your ideas ! I think the comments are open again to anonymous people :-) (Although Google's not-a-robot might interfere ...)