What're Your References?

marcusdkane

I'm sure that most of you have a few references thrown into your game, either via the playable characters, BOFFs or ships, which are taken from books, movies, music, etc... What are they?

I'll start the ball rolling with a few of mine:

I can't bring up the topic, without first mentioning the USS Sander, my tribute to our departed friend...
One I forgot to mention, is Cara's advanced escort, the USS Kasabian...
My pilot BOFF, Lisele Kerguelen Moray, is a partial character lift from FM Busby's novel Rebel Seed, and the protagonist Lisele, whose parents were Bran Tregare (born Bran Moray) and Rissa Kerguelen...
One of my security BOFFs, Porsche Santiago, is (in my headcanon) the twin sister of Lt Mercedes Santiago...
Another reference, is actually more an instance of 'shipping', and the first time I've actually ever engaged in 'shipping' in any franchise... Cara's new toy... I'm sure y'all can work it out...



So, what're your references?

rattler2

Well... I got a Tarantula named Gantrithor, several ships named after ships from Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and quite a few cosplay outfits....

marcusdkane

rattler2 wrote: »

Well... I got a Tarantula named Gantrithor, several ships named after ships from Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and quite a few cosplay outfits....

Awesome

theraven2378

My cruisers are named for famous and infamous battles.
For example my Paladin is called the USS Assaye and my Excelsior the USS Culloden

I do tend to break out the warhammer references as well

jonsills

The gimmick for my main, Adm. Jonathan Sills, is that his ships are all named for famed Terran physicists or neurologists (he recently moved his flag from the Odyssey-class USS Hans Asperger to the Yorktown-class USS Lorna Wing). I usually try to follow a naming convention for my other captains as well - Stanek, for instance, a Vulcan Tac captain, has ships named for raptors, from his first command, the Goshawk, to his latest, the Xyfius heavy escort USS Accipter.

I broke slightly with Kevin Timeline's naming convention; he started with each ship being named for a variant on the same name (his Pioneer was the Conestoga, his Daedelus was the Icarus, etc), which lasted until his Ranger-class battle cruiser, USS Wizard (both D&D class names). Then I upgraded him to a Paladin-class, wearing a Ranger skin - and chose to give this ship the name of the other Wizard's sister ship, the Time Bandit.

Oh, and I almost forgot - K'tang, my Fed Klingon captain, whose ships are named for Rush songs. Currently, he captains the Intrepid-class USS Sawyer; eventually, he'll wind up running either the Risian Corvette Red Barchetta or a battle cruiser named USS Rocinante.​​

thunderfoot

My science ships are all named after scientists who are not as well known as some others. Too many USS Hawkings swanning about ingame. My Klingon ships are named after weapons, such as IKS veS'Mup'wI(Warhammer). The translation to tlh'Ingan is accomplished with the Bing Translator. My Rihannsu ships are either named after Roman Legion troop types (R.R.W Hastati) or something which flies (R.R.W. Nierrh)

I generally do not bother with renaming my BOffs to a specific reference. All of my five Captains were named whatever came up in the Selection screen at the time of their creation. Whatever is posted in their Bios is just fluff I made up on the fly at the time.

dalolorn

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (as in, when the game went F2P), my first ship was the U.S.S. Aiur. Guess which game this roleplayer had just popped out of.

More recently, there's been all sorts of references and themed names, some of which are somewhat obscure and/or only comprehensible to me:

• My first Klingon commanded the I.K.S. Hurgh'ragh before it was deemed inferior and scrapped in favor of a Rezreth.
• My first Romulan flies the R.R.W. Brak'en.
• My Vulcan flies the Defiant-class U.S.S. Seleya. Come to think of it, this is a double reference as well as a thematically appropriate name.
• All of my Jem'Hadar ships are called 'Vessel this-and-that', with the digits in their name always summing up to 21. Yay for detection and emulation of random mathematical 'patterns'.
• An aliengen mockup of a Tarhedian, wearing what looks kinda like a weird mixture of Protoss and Herald armor, flying the Herald starships Baphal, Garfen and Anipho. (Two of these references are even more obscure than the rest - one can't even be found anywhere outside my head!)
• Recently I got the chance to outfit and fly a Mercury, which I promptly named U.S.S. Washburne. (Also, I painted it red. Not a deliberate reference to anything, I just like the color. )

legendarylycan

rattler2 wrote: »

Well... I got a Tarantula named Gantrithor

but is it yellow?

as far as references of my own, i have way too many characters to list them all, but my main fed has a paradox temporal deadnought called the Conundrum, which is a reference to an old (and unfortunately, very short-lived) sci-fi series about time travel called Seven Days

and there's also my character Schrodinger - three guesses what species he is, and the first two don't count​​

marcusdkane

theraven2378 wrote: »

My cruisers are named for famous and infamous battles.
For example my Paladin is called the USS Assaye and my Excelsior the USS Culloden

I do tend to break out the warhammer references as well

Very cool

irm1963

Got a few characters "inspired by...." as far as looks and the editor goes, usually rough out some sort of concept for naming and designing PCs and Boffs often taken from Trek archetypes in any case and I mainly use Culture ship names for my Orion and non-faction ships.

Starfleet ships tend to get canon/soft canon names or names based on their class name theme for Cryptic designed ones. Alien ones just get whatever string of gobbledygook the game comes up with

theraven2378

Update- These are all my fed cruisers
U.S.S. Inquisitor (T6 Fleet Eclipse)
U.S.S. Monte Cassino (T6 Tactical Odyssey) WW2 battle
U.S.S. Oudinarde (T6 Fleet Galaxy) War of Spanish Succession
U.S.S. Trafalgar (T5-U Sovereign) Napoleonic Wars
U.S.S. Isandlwana (T5-U Fleet Avenger) Zulu War
U.S.S. Assaye (T6 Paladin) Anglo-Maratha wars
U.S.S. Culloden (T6 Fleet Excelsior) Jacobite Uprising

My escorts
U.S.S. Meteor (T6 Fleet Defiant) Named for the Gloster Meteor jet fighter
U.S.S. Bulldog (T6 Fleet Prometheus) Named for the Royal Navy destroyer that captured U-110 and it's enigma machine with code books intact.

Science
U.S.S. Chindit (T6 Intrepid) WW2 long range jungle warfare unit though I'm considering changing it to U.S.S. Turing (British mathematician that broke the Enigma code)

marcusdkane

jonsills wrote: »

The gimmick for my main, Adm. Jonathan Sills, is that his ships are all named for famed Terran physicists or neurologists (he recently moved his flag from the Odyssey-class USS Hans Asperger to the Yorktown-class USS Lorna Wing). I usually try to follow a naming convention for my other captains as well - Stanek, for instance, a Vulcan Tac captain, has ships named for raptors, from his first command, the Goshawk, to his latest, the Xyfius heavy escort USS Accipter.

I broke slightly with Kevin Timeline's naming convention; he started with each ship being named for a variant on the same name (his Pioneer was the Conestoga, his Daedelus was the Icarus, etc), which lasted until his Ranger-class battle cruiser, USS Wizard (both D&D class names). Then I upgraded him to a Paladin-class, wearing a Ranger skin - and chose to give this ship the name of the other Wizard's sister ship, the Time Bandit.

Oh, and I almost forgot - K'tang, my Fed Klingon captain, whose ships are named for Rush songs. Currently, he captains the Intrepid-class USS Sawyer; eventually, he'll wind up running either the Risian Corvette Red Barchetta or a battle cruiser named USS Rocinante.​​

I've also stuck with the 'scientists and rivers' rule, with Cara's Type 8 being the Brahe, and her Danube being the Sumida. Her Delta Flyer, is from my 'stellar phenomena' rule, where Marcus' written Delta Flyers were the Equinox and the Zenith, and thus Cara's, is the Aphelion.

The other rule I've particularly played with, involves the Akira-Class...

Cara's first proper command (outside of the tutorial freebie) was a contemporary-built Constitution-Class which was destroyed by enemy forces during the abduction of Miral Paris. After her crew being rescued and brought back to ESD (aboard a coincidentally identical vessel of the same class ) she was then promoted, and given the USS Tetsuo to retrieve Miral. Even with fast-tracking, I couldn't reconcile a girl of Cara's age and inexperience being given command of an Akira-Class a55-whooper... So where the Armitage-Class is an uprating of the Akira Class, the Benten-Class* Tetsuo is a downrating of the Akira-Class; pairing the engineering booms and pylons of the Akira-Class, with the nacelles and saucer of the lower-rated Zephyr-Class escort... Something a little more 'junior' for a junior officer...

T'Karra, on the other hand, is in keeping with her Star Trek Trexels origin... In Trexels skirmishes, I had her in command of the Akira-Class USS Gryphon, and so just as T'Karra is a literal character lift of the pixilated character, so is the Gryphon. Keeping with the idea of uprating from pixilated to HighDef** characters, I built the Gryphon as per Sander's initial description of the Tiburon: An Akira-Class hull, which had been retrofit with Armitage saucer and nacelles... I'm not sure how her ships will progress as she levels up, or if I might just keep swapping the higher-tier components onto the Gryphon, until it hits The Wall where the levels simply insist on a higher-tier ship...

*named for the character in Cyber City: Oedo 808, in keeping with the Akira/Alita tradition...
**Grand Theft Auto has universes of pixilated, 3D and High Definition... I consider STO as HighDef

marcusdkane

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

My science ships are all named after scientists who are not as well known as some others. Too many USS Hawkings swanning about ingame. My Klingon ships are named after weapons, such as IKS veS'Mup'wI(Warhammer). The translation to tlh'Ingan is accomplished with the Bing Translator. My Rihannsu ships are either named after Roman Legion troop types (R.R.W Hastati) or something which flies (R.R.W. Nierrh)

I generally do not bother with renaming my BOffs to a specific reference. All of my five Captains were named whatever came up in the Selection screen at the time of their creation. Whatever is posted in their Bios is just fluff I made up on the fly at the time.

I definitely like your idea for your ship names

Every time I think "I'll let this next BOFF keep their name..." it throws something stupid out, like a totally made up word for a Human, or just inappropriate... A Human Tactical/Intelligence officer the game offered me, dude's name was Adolph!!! O_O

legendarylycan

which is doubly ironic, because hitler was neither intelligent nor a great tactician​​

marcusdkane

dalolorn wrote: »

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (as in, when the game went F2P), my first ship was the U.S.S. Aiur. Guess which game this roleplayer had just popped out of.

More recently, there's been all sorts of references and themed names, some of which are somewhat obscure and/or only comprehensible to me:

• My first Klingon commanded the I.K.S. Hurgh'ragh before it was deemed inferior and scrapped in favor of a Rezreth.
• My first Romulan flies the R.R.W. Brak'en.
• My Vulcan flies the Defiant-class U.S.S. Seleya. Come to think of it, this is a double reference as well as a thematically appropriate name.
• All of my Jem'Hadar ships are called 'Vessel this-and-that', with the digits in their name always summing up to 21. Yay for detection and emulation of random mathematical 'patterns'.
• An aliengen mockup of a Tarhedian, wearing what looks kinda like a weird mixture of Protoss and Herald armor, flying the Herald starships Baphal, Garfen and Anipho. (Two of these references are even more obscure than the rest - one can't even be found anywhere outside my head!)
• Recently I got the chance to outfit and fly a Mercury, which I promptly named U.S.S. Washburne. (Also, I painted it red. Not a deliberate reference to anything, I just like the color. )

Some very cool concepts, big Thumbs Up indeed

marcusdkane

shadowfang240 wrote: »

which is doubly ironic, because hitler was neither intelligent nor a great tactician​​

Exactly He did say one thing which I agree with: "Words build bridges into unexplored regions" I don't think anyone, especially someone who loves reading or diplomacy, etc, could say that that is not true...

PS I forgot to say, I like your refences too

marcusdkane

irm1963 wrote: »

Got a few characters "inspired by...." as far as looks and the editor goes, usually rough out some sort of concept for naming and designing PCs and Boffs often taken from Trek archetypes in any case and I mainly use Culture ship names for my Orion and non-faction ships.

Starfleet ships tend to get canon/soft canon names or names based on their class name theme for Cryptic designed ones. Alien ones just get whatever string of gobbledygook the game comes up with

Sounds good

ryan218

Well, the U.S.S. Victorious is named after the Illustrious-Class Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious, which is pretty much a family reference. My Grandfather served on her during the '60s, after the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation.

My old main has had two ships which were reference-named: an Aventine-Class Vesta named the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, after the first battle of the American Revolution; and an Odyssey-Class named U.S.S. DeForrest Kelley.

artan42

My mains ships are named after Royal Navy ships. Not for any particular conection but rather because of the awesome names. My AoY has ships named after TOS/TAS/KT ships.

marcusdkane

ryan218 wrote: »

Well, the U.S.S. Victorious is named after the Illustrious-Class Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious, which is pretty much a family reference. My Grandfather served on her during the '60s, after the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation.

My old main has had two ships which were reference-named: an Aventine-Class Vesta named the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, after the first battle of the American Revolution; and an Odyssey-Class named U.S.S. DeForrest Kelley.

That's a pretty cool connection I know my paternal grandfather served on a minesweeper during WWII, but I can't remember the name... Definitely some cool references

marcusdkane

artan42 wrote: »

My mains ships are named after Royal Navy ships. Not for any particular conection but rather because of the awesome names. My AoY has ships named after TOS/TAS/KT ships.

Have to admit, they are some pretty damn cool names T'Karra's original Pioneer was the USS Thunderchild, as a kind of backward-homage

antonine3258

Romulans primarily use birds of prey, generally smaller ones (Since An'riel generally pilots the big battlecruiser warbirds, I think she's urging the Elements to make them more nimble). Simurgh was a bit more mythological, but as a hybrid Solanae ship, it had a touch of the fantastic. Ships she doesn't 'canonically' run tend to me named after concepts from the Romulan spiritual tradition of worshiping the Elements

On the Klingon side, D'ellian pulls ship names from the naming conventions used in Star Fleet Battles for Klingon ships, which are technically translations. Demonslayer in particular was named to remind everyone, as an outsider, the Orion's role in helping with the Fek incursion.

Starfleet pulls a bit more wildly, but in the finest tradition of Star Trek, suspiciously often from Earth.

A character with an Oracle class ship named it Delphi naturally. Since her previous Nebula was the Mutara, I suspect a real sense of humor in those Operations computer banks.

Antonine, from a fairly remote Federation member, seems to pick famous Earth ships, battles, and people (She had a Stiles at one point for the Earth-Romulan war.) Constellation is a pretty traditional Starfleet name). Trafalgar is the great naval battle of the age of sail, not bad for a long-haul vessel like the Guardian she expected would be involved in the Iconian War, and Salamis for the battle that maintained the squabbling Greeks independence, as a nod to the Prometheus class's name origin. Nagato was named after the often-flagship of the IJN, a ship nearly as powerful as the ship that lent the class name for the Yamato class.

Antonine's duplicate therefore got a smaller, weaker IJN battleship name in the Fusou There may be issues there.

Captain Foch, out of the past, picked the name of the hero of the great French epic Roland as he fancies himself a bit of a paladin.

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azniadeet

One of my toons; Edinger, is named after a former NFL kicker, Paul Edinger. My ship's Vulcan doctor; Span, is named after MLB center fielder, Denard Span. I have a toon named Telsia as an homage to the Star Trek Elite Force games.

captan2er0

My Gorn medic has ships named after EMS vehciles/fire station vehicles with corresponding station numbers in their closest Klingon equilents.

My Romulan Maenek, is a Doctor Who themed character right down to the IRW SU'KEAH being an acronymn name.

I have a few others that are themed but those two have been my favorites.

rattler2

shadowfang240 wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

Well... I got a Tarantula named Gantrithor

but is it yellow?​​

Well... As much yellow as I can put on her with hull patterns anyways.

I forgot to mention a few of my Klingon ships were named either after WarCraft stuff (Doomhammer, Zuljin) or Kilrathi names from Wing Commander (Bhantkara, Thrak'hath, Sivar).
My Romulan has pretty much everything named after Legend of Zelda stuff, and is herself a Zelda reference. (Romulan female named Saria, main ship is the RRW Farore)

marcusdkane

antonine3258 wrote: »

Romulans primarily use birds of prey, generally smaller ones (Since An'riel generally pilots the big battlecruiser warbirds, I think she's urging the Elements to make them more nimble). Simurgh was a bit more mythological, but as a hybrid Solanae ship, it had a touch of the fantastic. Ships she doesn't 'canonically' run tend to me named after concepts from the Romulan spiritual tradition of worshiping the Elements

On the Klingon side, D'ellian pulls ship names from the naming conventions used in Star Fleet Battles for Klingon ships, which are technically translations. Demonslayer in particular was named to remind everyone, as an outsider, the Orion's role in helping with the Fek incursion.

Starfleet pulls a bit more wildly, but in the finest tradition of Star Trek, suspiciously often from Earth.

A character with an Oracle class ship named it Delphi naturally. Since her previous Nebula was the Mutara, I suspect a real sense of humor in those Operations computer banks.

Antonine, from a fairly remote Federation member, seems to pick famous Earth ships, battles, and people (She had a Stiles at one point for the Earth-Romulan war.) Constellation is a pretty traditional Starfleet name). Trafalgar is the great naval battle of the age of sail, not bad for a long-haul vessel like the Guardian she expected would be involved in the Iconian War, and Salamis for the battle that maintained the squabbling Greeks independence, as a nod to the Prometheus class's name origin. Nagato was named after the often-flagship of the IJN, a ship nearly as powerful as the ship that lent the class name for the Yamato class.

Antonine's duplicate therefore got a smaller, weaker IJN battleship name in the Fusou There may be issues there.

Captain Foch, out of the past, picked the name of the hero of the great French epic Roland as he fancies himself a bit of a paladin.

That's definitely a rich tapestry of references to draw on, I most definitely approve

marcusdkane

azrael605 wrote: »

I have a Fed character named Charles Victor Strange for Professor X, Dr. Doom, & Dr. Strange. A couple of KDF characters named Daavik & Malik (kotor & Ent), a Fed Klingon named Kurgan Romanoff, a KDF Human (alien gen) named Conner Macleod, & my newest character, Captain Eliott Spencer & his ship the USS Nathan Ford.

Thats just a minor sampling really.

That really is an awesome combination I'm definitely being inspired to get creative

marcusdkane

azniadeet wrote: »

One of my toons; Edinger, is named after a former NFL kicker, Paul Edinger. My ship's Vulcan doctor; Span, is named after MLB center fielder, Denard Span. I have a toon named Telsia as an homage to the Star Trek Elite Force games.

Ahh, now using football players as a source, is a very cool and nicely niche idea I remember Telsia... That was a cool game

marcusdkane

captan2er0 wrote: »

My Gorn medic has ships named after EMS vehciles/fire station vehicles with corresponding station numbers in their closest Klingon equilents.

My Romulan Maenek, is a Doctor Who themed character right down to the IRW SU'KEAH being an acronymn name.

I have a few others that are themed but those two have been my favorites.

I'd always considered myself a fairly knowledgeable fan of Doctor Who, but you're definitely going to have to explain those character references for me...

thunderfoot

Almost forgot. The game Star Trek:Armada II has files for each of the ship types in that game. A great many ships from that game are present in STO. It is easy to pull/open a ship file from the game and check the name list in the file for something suitable. I haven't tried this yet with any of the Starfleet Command series, but it should be just as simple to do. The little bit I remember from looking into the SFC I files is a lot of Klingon ships are named after notable people of the Empire and the KDF.

EDIT:
Told you about the files and forgot to tell you how to get to them. In STA2 the specific file types all have an <.ODF> extension. They can be opened with Notepad. It does not matter if you change them from Read Only or not. Copy/Paste will work anyways. Pretty sure the ship files from SFC I and SFC II can be opened the same way but I do not remember the file names or extensions. Star Trek: Legacy uses the same file format as Star Trek: Armada II. So there is another resource for names. The part about the names from these files I like is they are soft canon since I do RP lightly from time to time.