Mission screens are not the only place where planet names are used. There is for instance the planet list on the Wiki. No amount of scripting in an OXP can change that. And it's not only the planet lists, but for instance the Missions page as well, which lists the requirements for starting a mission. It says for instance: "Begins when docked in Leesti.", and it will continue to say so even if for a certain percentage of Oolite players (not all!) an OXP will have changed the name of that system to "Wolf 356" or whatever. Or imagine the other case: as somebody who is used to using the Wiki resources I find the requirement that something is "A mission based out of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corp. HQ in the Aqualina system.", again on the same Missions page. Thus I go to the map part of the wiki in order to find out what the shortest route from my current system to Aqualina is. I'll have tough luck, because the Wiki planet lists clearly tells me that there is no Aqualina system. I find that unnecessarily confusing.Thargoid wrote:Why this hang-up on system names? They can be coded into mission screens so that if they are changed by an OXP then the name in the mission screen also changes.
There are also these very boards, where players continuously ask questions about something that happened (or didn't happen, or ought to have happened) in this-and-that system during a mission. Then I would have to answer them: "Sorry, you must be hallucinating. This-and-that system doesn't exist in Oolite." Again, unnecessarily confusing.
The point is that the planet names are important markers not only inside the game (which can indeed be taken care of by good and bug-free scripting), but more importantly outside the game. As human beings we prefer to refer to a thing (for instance a certain system in Oolite) by its name in our normal conversation, not by some cryptic internal identifier like a number. And by definition our conversation takes place outside the game proper, for instance on these boards, on the IRC channel, or in the Wiki, none of which can auto-change the names we're using according to the set of OXPs which each of the potential readers has installed in their game. That's why names are important.
As long as there is only one single name change (like Aqualina was/is for a long time), it may even be possible that virtually all board members have kept it in their minds. But as soon as name changes would become more frequent, this would become impossible. The Ooniverse would become fractured quite quickly, with nobody knowing anymore what everybody else would be talking about. I find that not desirable.
To sum up: I see a lot of possible complications, but no actual benefits from arbitrary name changes of systems (seriously, what can "Aqualina" do that would be categorically impossible with "Ribiara"?). At the same time I see only benefits, but no disadvantages whatsoever from sticking to the original names. That's a clear case for me: there is not one sensible reason for arbitrarily changing system names.