Lack of Star Names

[Fyron]

Unfortunately, it appears that MM repeated the mistake of having a systemnames.txt file with less than 255 names in it again (only 104, in fact). To this end, I've been looking for some sort of official listing of star names as a replacement. I found this site linked off of Nasa.gov:

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/con...name_list.html

I compiled them into a SystemNames.txt and attached to this post for convenience. There are 292 names in the file, so more than enough to cover any sized map the game can support.

[Captain Kwok]

I think what would be more appropriate than real star names (since they are mostly ugly ones, let's be honest) is coming up with another 150 or so names in the spirit of SE:V's current names.

[Fyron]

Oh? I think most of the stock names are pretty cheesy and ugly... Welshrok? Kinkara? Nooloom?

[MasterChiToes]

se5 needs something like this... http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/index.shtml

(I like having options like Greek or Diverse Japanese... so games can be tailored beyond just having a huge random list)

[Tim_Ward]

Back in the days of SEIII (*lights pipe*) I had a systemnames file I got from somewhere with real names like Barnards Star and Epsilon Endrani as well as a bunch of made up names in the same spirit. This was a great improvement on the stock names, which are/were pretty meh.

Never did manage to find it again for SEIV.

[Captain Kwok]

I find that real names are just too "human-centric" with their Alphas and Betas and stuff - at least the stock ones sound kind of cosmic/futuristic/alien-ish without sacrificing too much pronouncability.

[Tim_Ward]

With the stock ones, the name doesn't even make an impact on my mind - I just think of "the crappy system I only colonised to make my empire look neat on the minimap" and "that one with three planets with brathable atmospheres". I prefer human-centric names - I'm a human

[MasterChiToes]

Perhaps each empire/species should have its own naming convention for the stars... and maybe a system should get its name from the first empire to explore it.

As far as human centric names, I find constellation names tend to sound better than most star names. What I don't like with stock lists, is they tend to have entries that are clearly inserted for giggles, like: Alba, Musume, Mutara, Torchwood, etc.

[dmm]

MasterChiToes said: ...stock lists...tend to have entries that are clearly inserted for giggles, like: Alba, Musume, Mutara, Torchwood, etc.

I don't get it. Why are these funny?

[Puke]

back in the days of my old unfinished grit-tech mod, i imported a list of a few hundred names to use in my system names file.

now the problem with this, in hindsight, is that most of the visible stars in the sky are actually Galaxies. Not something you want to name your solar system. What you actually want, is a list of local stars, or names of stars in the Milkyway.

Now, the large problem here is that there are only actually 2-300 named stars, and theyre all either Latin or Arabic, and a miminum of 500 years old. SE has always had "cultural" design name files, so you might want to name your stars after something different entirely. This also allows you to have more than a few hundred names, if you want to introduce some more variety. or have really frikkin huge maps.

http://www.teapot.orcon.net.nz/maori_star_names.html