The Stars Beyond

[Aeonic]

Praetorian is just a personal guard for the emperor - an "elite" Centurion.

But quite honestly, I don't think the Commonwealth has much of a naming theme. You've got Centurion, Britannia, Aquila, Ronin, Wolfen, etc... The Commonwealth seems to be a mesh of many groups working together.

And I think by definition, a Commonwealth is just a bunch of independent groups working together under a single rule. One group could make one ship design, another group could make another ship. Each group could have their own naming scheme.

Pacific Defense Corporation seems to be the company you're interested in. The real question is, what company made Wolfy's ship?

[Aury]

some background info and changes in TX2:
Pacifica only makes the ronin (which is now named as an obsolete syrtian-war era ship, so its not seen on the front lines any longer), the centurion, the praetorian and maybe the britannia(?). Their shipyards are geared towards mass production of gunships, not building capships.
Someone else produces the aquila and monitor, a third produces the CSC, and a fourth the auton.
The CSC's also seem to have been built infrequently at different times to somewhat varying specifications. There are already 4 variations; katana, heavy nami (antarctica is the only one that ever uses it properly; the terra occasionally might, and the others never seem to use it, even though its in the xml, so might as well say its specific to the antarctica.), command, and hospital. TX2 adds a fifth, a heavily fortified defense/command variant, which is the CSC Pangaea, designed to coordinate the defense of st.k's and surrounding systems.

[Prophet]

I would assume the CSCs would be built on a contract basis by the CW government as no single corporation would be capable of producing one by itself. Like the modern naval ships. Most large vessels are unique. At least I've never seen any sort of logo on them besides the government's or the branch of the armed force it operates under.

The britannia's are deadly, I have them guarding some of my stations and with their xm900's they pwn any small craft wandering near.

[Aury]

I would assume the CSCs would be built on a contract basis by the CW government as no single corporation would be capable of producing one by itself. Like the modern naval ships. Most large vessels are unique. At least I've never seen any sort of logo on them besides the government's or the branch of the armed force it operates under.

This is what I was thinking... Already the components are being built by different companies.

[Atarlost]

Praetorian is just a personal guard for the emperor - an "elite" Centurion.

But quite honestly, I don't think the Commonwealth has much of a naming theme. You've got Centurion, Britannia, Aquila, Ronin, Wolfen, etc... The Commonwealth seems to be a mesh of many groups working together.

Ronins and Wolfens are only used by the militia. Centurion and Aquila are definately roman military themed. Britannia is more tenuous, but is the last province added to the Roman Republic before it became the Roman Empire.

Praetorian is simply something no republic would use. There is no emperor and the last thing you want is the voters thinking their politicians have aspirations to being rulers instead of public servants, especially if they actually do.

I was confusing tribunes with something else though. It looks like I was in fact confusing them with Praetors, which would be the correct noun form (praetorian being adjectival) and was a preexisting officer class in the republic. The connotations of the term, though, are still problematic IMO.

For TX2 I'd also strongly consider renaming either the Aquila to break the naming scheme if it comes from the manufactuers or renaming the Britannia to better adhere to it if it's imposed by the commonwealth military beurocracy.

[Aeonic]

Atarlost, you're way over-thinking the Praetorian thing.

"The Praetorian Guard was a force of bodyguards used by Roman Emperors. Before being appropriated for the use of the Emperors' personal guards, the title was used for the guards of Roman generals". - Wikipedia

A Praetorian Guard was a bodyguard. Even presidents and important people in the American democratic government today use bodyguards. The Praetorian-class was designed to take out offending capital ships, to protect Commonwealth stations and carriers. You might think of a Praetorian as a CSC's bodyguard. They're only called out when there's a big threat looming.

[Atarlost]

But they're not called bodyguard. They're called praetors. (and I hope at least that change gets made) It doesn't matter that even presidents have bodyguards. It doesn't matter that praetor originally referred to a general's bodyguard. What matters is that in the minds of the voters they're associated with Imperial Rome.

Politics is about symbolism more than content and I don't see that changing, at least not among baseline or enhanced humans. Maybe the ringers and other neohumans have different enough neural structure and/or brain chemistry that it's not the case for them, but the commonwealth is baseline humanity in everything that matters.

[Aeonic]

What matters is that in the minds of the voters they're associated with Imperial Rome.

Well then they shouldn't have named their ships with a roman theme! This isn't freaking politics, its a game! Get over it.

[Sponge]

Since this is already as derailed as possible, I'd like to point out that Praetorians, especially toward the end of the Roman Empire, were somewhat laughable. At one point they actually auctioned off the empire to the highest bidder, only to be utterly destroyed shortly thereafter by a general and his actual combat legion.

[Atarlost]

What matters is that in the minds of the voters they're associated with Imperial Rome.

Well then they shouldn't have named their ships with a roman theme! This isn't freaking politics, its a game! Get over it.

Just because the player isn't involved in the politics of the game world does not mean thought should not be put into the matter. It adds verisimilitude.

[Aeonic]

Since this is already as derailed as possible, I'd like to point out that Praetorians, especially toward the end of the Roman Empire, were somewhat laughable. At one point they actually auctioned off the empire to the highest bidder, only to be utterly destroyed shortly thereafter by a general and his actual combat legion.

*sigh*. I'm getting tired of this nitpicking, so I'm just going to quote Wikipedia some more:

"Although its name has become synonymous with intrigue, conspiracy, disloyalty and assassination, it could be argued that for the first two centuries of its existence the Praetorian Guard was, on the whole, a positive force in the Roman state. During this time it mostly removed (or allowed the removal of) cruel, weak, and unpopular emperors while generally supporting just, strong, and popular ones. By protecting these monarchs, thus extending their reigns, and also by keeping the disorders of the mobs of Rome and the intrigues of the Senate in line, the Guard helped give the empire a much needed stability that contributed to the period known as the Pax Romana."

Incidentally here's another interesting source if you're looking for good roman military names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ro ... unit_types

[Aury]

Now that ive gotten the luminous architctural style down, ive decided to work on some luminous ships, and to also rework the luminous in thier entirity.

ships;

pod; small easily deployed attack craft; first luminous ship encountered; basic workhorse of the luminous.
1x luminous armature
1x luminous blaster (ion)
1x 150mw luminous reactor

probe; tiny but slow, with a lesser adaptive shield; it is unarmed. used to scout out enemy weapon types; this is mostly an experiment in seeing if i can get them to behave in a semi intelligent way. ill elaborate more once i can type from my computer instead of my phone.
btw; if they get close enough, ill try to implement an ability to scan the target ship.
1x light luminous armatue
1x light luminius shield
1x 150 mw luminous reactor

mine assembler; a mine layer essentially. it is armed only with its launcher. it can assemble effective mine types based on the resistances and number of enemies.
1x light luminous smart shield (in flight adaptation, but resistance gain is much less than normal shield. more useful for player than normal luminous shields).
1x luminous mine launcher (some of the luminous mines are like mags or missiles as well.)
6x heavy luminous armature
1x mine assembler (very hard to get, and takes a good amount of power. luminous mines do not sell for much, so its not infinite money in any case)
1x luminous 350mw reactor

pod assembler; a ship that assembles and deploys pods.
12x heavy luminous armature
2x light luminous seeker cannons
3x 350mw luminous reactor

commander; these guys are the brains; they, like assembler stations and meta-assembers, can produce probes. they can also call for reinforcements like the charon frigate.
1x luminous smart shield
4x luminous seeker cannons
2x luminous 350mw reactors
12x heavy luminous armature

my phone has a char lim, so i am going to cont. in next post...

[Aury]

hunter-killer; an adaptive gunship...? more details later... george was originally planning to put this in the game, but...

meta-assember; more info coming later... im deciding if i want to keep the core ships (ai core ships) sepparate or as the same class; this is due to playbility and plot reasons...

anyways, there will be rewards related to the luminous. some ideas i have include luminous armor nanites that add the smart armor ability to what they are applied on, a reactor enhancing device, and probably one of the best being luminous modifictions to ones ships, or perhapse something like the luminous tame program, but cycling every so often (still only 20 ls range), and or stuff like that...

[Aury]

luminous pod has its images done!

(yes, it is supposed to be a truncated version of the drone)

//edit//

luminous probe done:
: nothing pretty nor fancy: it just flies in and collects data on the target (either by scanning or getting killed.)

[Aury]

I decided to make the pteravores and luminous 'enemies' so to speak: the luminous deem the pteravores as a threat that must be eradicated, and the pteravores deem the luminous as a prime source of food (as the luminous, being the AI it is, requires only pteracnium fuel rods to survive, as its the fuel to run its assemblers, AI cores, and ships). Now the harvesters the luminous use to gather resources carry more pteracnium (as it is purified onboard from the ore) than the CW's pteracnium superfreighters (this refined pteracnium is still useless to the player as its not packaged in reactor-friendly fuel rods). This makes them prime targets for the pteravores. Thus began the conflict between the two.

Early luminous designs failed and the AI began to suffer due to lack of fuel to maintain its operations, so it developed a more advanced form of harvester, which was immune to the original pteravores which starved the colonies of their main food supply, however, some colonies had an adaptation allowing them to grow more advanced claws, that could bypass the harvester's counter defenses.

Thus they evolved and adapted to each other, and with the nature of the luminous's state as an AI, and the pteravore's high rate of reproduction allowing for this.

Anyways, here's a pteravore thing, earlier refered to on IRC as a 'pteravore spore', but I didn't mean to imply they spread, so I'll come up with a new name later.

It looked better before photobucket compressed it to crap.