I woke up this morning with vendetta on the mind. Man was that weird.

Anyhow, this may have been thought of before, I hate going back more than a couple pages to look, sorry if that makes me lazy :P

Anyhue, I thought about a "new" way to identify ships and people.
Individual chars still have their names, no change there (yet). However ships will also have names. I think a name length would have to be implemented to avoid clutter, but oh well. Now this just sounds like nothing at first, but it would be beneficial with just one more thing: the ability to get rid of your char name. If there was a special outfit to eliminate char names, and let users see only the ship name, it could be quite interesting.

Pirates would not need to switch accounts. Someone could go out and buy this expensive part, and suddenly become anonymous all over again.

Just a though, kinda incoherent and rambled....I know.

I've thought about that too, but I don't yet have an answer I feel good about.

I, too, like the ability of seeing a ship and not knowing its pilot. Reputable ships might have a broadcaster that beams its identity to other ships. Military ships might go by callsigns and class, "Itani Valkyrie, Modifications Detected," or "Itani Valkyrie Beta." Flagships, could of course be named "IMS Thunder Talon" or something.

Less reputable pilots might disable such a broadcaster. Or, they might change what it broadcasts to suit their mood. Fearsome pirates might be known only by nose art or some other visual type of scanning (say, if you see a ship, you can designate a name to it on your targeting computer; if you see it again, the user-entered name pops up). So if a well-armed pirate kills my marauder, despite all attempts to escape, I might name him via my computer "l33t pirate" and make a quick note "excellent at sunflares and chasing down ships." If he shows up again, I know to make like hell or call in reinforcements. This is probably the only feasible way to keep track of problem ships (from a client's point of view).

This option, of course, would be disabled for aligned ships.

Sometimes if you have multiple engine layouts of a ship in the same station, but same weapons, it's hard to tell apart between the two aside from the color of the equipment icon. If not ship names, I think assigning each one a certain number or whatever would also help. I dunno, something more would be nice. And then maybe they can move on to nose art.

=)

And this is on-topic how?

The topic here is ship/character names/descriptions, no?

/me slaps SirCamps

Like I said, although I've spent quite abit of time thinking about this because I think it would be interesting, I don't have a design I'm happy with.

I will mention a couple of things to consider though:

1) If you are going to allow characters to hide thier identity, you should have a way to break that secret and learn the character's name, faction rank, bounties, and reputation (not necessarily a number but something like 'Heroic', 'Respected', 'Sinister', 'Infamous', etc. depending on the number). I had invisioned some sort of scanner and maybe a skill check of some sort. Better scanners would have longer range or work more quickly or more accurately (see below).

2) In the real world, we don't allow planes and ships to fly around without saying who they are, of if they do refuse to say who they are we send F-16's to investigate. If you turn off your 'transponder' that identifies you, or if you don't respond to 'hailing frequencies' or whatever, you should show up highlighted on radar in some fashion and should attract the attention of any local Def Bots who will insist you identify yourself. I would imagine more advanced societies would give ship's and pilots something like an electronic fingerprint, some sort of secure and difficult to forge ID number (1024 bit diffey-hillmen exchange with a licensing authority, I don't know), to be continually broadcast that would function as ship's registration, pilot's license, license plate, and so forth.

3) Any device you might use to conceal yourself needs to be configurable in some fashion to be truly interesting. A cheap 'scanner jammer' might make it more difficult to scan you, but nonetheless reveals that you are someone with something to hide. A true 'smuggling device' would allow you to configure a false reading of your choosing. (The name is 'WickedAce', this is the ship 'Dante's Run', and I've got a hold full of Mining Widgets', when really its Icarus with a hold full of rare metals).

4) Some characters ought to be able to obtain licenses whereby they can conceal or falsify thier identity without getting in trouble with the local NPC's. Undercover agents, spies, military ships etc. ought to have the right to conceal information from thier own factoin at the least.

5) One of the biggest problems I have with the whole concealed identity thing though is that online RPG communities really need a some sort of reputation system to survive. If you can reasonably fake or conceal your identity in game, it will seem kinda wierd that your reputation was magically effected anyway. I can live with that as a limitation of the system, but some might object. Some will argue that if they successfully conceal thier identity they ought to be able to 'get away with it'.

They don't need to get away with it. Maybe the victim ships have a llittle black-box that registers all the damage the ship takes and beams the aggressor's stats to an authority. Something like the concealed pilot's weapons loadout, fake registration number, etc and then flag their ship with some sort of radioactive isotope so that the authorities can hunt him down, scan him, and THEN determine who he is.
I would think invesitgations of a concealed person would be much more rigororus than normal and the punishments much more severe. Even if you were caught concealing your ID your reputation would take a hit with all other factions.

Personally I would just like to see ship names in space targeting. So I may target a vessle and see its name as "The Trader" . Then there would be a place in stations where you can search ship names for who they are registered to. "The Trader" search pilot- would give you "BobtheNewb"

Also you could search pilots. Search Pilot: "BobtheNewb" would give you all ships he has registered.

For pirates it could be possible to buy unregistered ships from the blackmarket.