Naming of (sub) planets

[Cody]

The Alpha, Beta idea is ok except for that the "System Name" is really the main planet name. This is evidenced by the planet descriptions. E.g "The world Leleer is very noted for ..." and "The planet Rabedira is well known for ...", etc.

<chuckles> I wasn't going to mention that, but...

[Thargoid]

Easily dealt with. The main planet can be named "<system name> (Prime Planet)" and the sub-planets are named "<system name> <greek letter> (Planet)". Then everything is consistent still.

I don't like the idea of "randomly" named planets - it makes more sense to me to have them sequentially named. As to what their "local" names are, I'll leave that to the players imagination. Moons of course are a different matter, but as they aren't linked to planets (explicitly) then they should be self-contained in terms of naming I think. Having the moons linked to planet names won't work as there's no relation in their spawning to any planet.

[DeathKnyte]

Hiya,

I'm going to take a stab at trying to offer my idea to your question...

What I feel would be the simplest, and possibly the easiest for people to understand would be the following:

Suppose you enter (or are in) the Tibedied system...

Main planet (with the station) = Tibedied or Tibedied Prime
First planet closest to the star = Tibedied I
Second planet from the star = Tibedied II
Third planet from the star = Tibedied III
Fourth planet from the star = Tibedied IV
So you certainly get the idea, and can go up to how many planets you have in the system.

For moons, use the smaller case of the alphabet; a, b, c, d, e, etc.
This will allow you to have up to 26 moons per planet.
You could use either upper case (A, B, C, D, etc), or fall into doubling (aa, bb, cc, dd, etc), if you want more than 26 moons.

So suppose I want to go to the 17th moon of the 5th planet in the system, that would be: Tibedied Vq
The 11th planet would be Tibedied XI
The 28th moon of the 6th planet would be Tibedied VIcc (or Tibedied VIC)
The 8th moon of the main planet = Tibedied h (or Tibedied Prime h)

The system name should be like in the Galaxy Chart (F6 + F6). So as to noy overly confuse everyone familiar with the game already.
So thinking about it, maybe Tibedied Prime would be best for the main planet, as the sytem (star) name would be Tibedied.

[Thargoid]

I'm in two minds about "Lave Alpha", "Lave Beta", etc. versus "Lave I", "Lave II", etc. The former seems more "sci-fi", but the latter is clearer (for those who don't know their Greek alphabet).

So I've put a poll up to get a wider tally.

@DeathKnyte - the only item to comment there is that in the game the moons aren't linked to planets - they are essentially free-floating entities of their own. Hence naming them in relation to planets doesn't make much sense, and indeed may not be doable at all as they may be very far apart. Hence I wanted to keep their naming distinct.

But aside from that I'll add your input to my considerations.

[PhantorGorth]

@DeathKnyte - the only item to comment there is that in the game the moons aren't linked to planets - they are essentially free-floating entities of their own. Hence naming them in relation to planets doesn't make much sense, and indeed may not be doable at all as they may be very far apart. Hence I wanted to keep their naming distinct.

I had considered that but you can "easily" assign a moon to a planet by the rule of nearest planet with the caveat that any moon further than half the distant from the planet to the nearest other planet can not be a moon of it and must either be a moon of another planet or failing that be treated as a planet instead.

I don't like the idea of "randomly" named planets - it makes more sense to me to have them sequentially named. As to what their "local" names are, I'll leave that to the players imagination. Moons of course are a different matter, but as they aren't linked to planets (explicitly) then they should be self-contained in terms of naming I think.

I can understand where you are coming from but it doesn't make sense to have moons with names like "Eos" (Greek goddess of the dawn) and the planets just get names like "Zaonce-Alpha".

I suggest you do something like my suggestion for assigning moons to planets and give the moons a hierarchical names too and just use your idea of the .name override for local names.

[Kasero]

Hiya,
[...]
Suppose you enter (or are in) the Tibedied system...

Main planet (with the station) = Tibedied or Tibedied Prime
First planet closest to the star = Tibedied I
Second planet from the star = Tibedied II
Third planet from the star = Tibedied III
Fourth planet from the star = Tibedied IV
So you certainly get the idea, and can go up to how many planets you have in the system.
[...]

Your idea is interesting.
But Tibedied Prime should also be incuded in the planets rank from the sun. (From your ranking above, we can't know how far from the sun Tibedied Prime is).
Lets suppose Tibedied Prime is the 4th planet from the sun. Using the roman numbers, the naming would be:
Tibedied I
Tibedied II
Tibedied III
Tibedied Prime (Tibedied alone would not be wise, as it is already the name of the sun)
Tibedied V
Tibedied VI and so on...

And for the moons, we use arab numbers.
Tibedied I (no moons, so nothing)
Tibedied II-1, II-2, II-3
Tibedied III-1, III-2, ... ,III-7
Tibedied IV-1, IV-2, ... (in this case, we don't name the moons Tibedied Prime-1, Tibedied Prime-2...)
etc...

[Commander McLane]

Tibedied Prime (Tibedied alone would not be wise, as it is already the name of the sun)

No, it's the name of the planet. The suns don't have names in Elite/Oolite.

[Kasero]

Right.
Then, Tibedied with no number attached would be good as it would be the same designation as it is now.

[Thargoid]

Tibedied Prime (Tibedied alone would not be wise, as it is already the name of the sun)

No, it's the name of the planet. The suns don't have names in Elite/Oolite.

Arguably nor do planets in Elite/Oolite, it's the systems that are named. But the names are used fairly interchangably as in vanilla Oolite and Elite there is only one planet, main station and sun per system so it doesn't matter.

But in part as Oolite can open things out more, this is why I sought a few ideas in this thread. I have a fair idea now of what I'm going to do (moons aren't going to be linked to planets for example), but I'll leave things to run for a bit longer.

[Gimbal Locke]

This is how real exoplanets currently get their names, I have highlighted the most relevant part:

The standard for naming exoplanets is an extension of the one used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for multiple-star systems. This section will therefore start by briefly discussing the WMC standard, which has been adopted by the International Astronomical Union. Under that standard, the brightest member of a system receives the letter "A." Distinct components not contained within "A" are labeled "B", "C", etc. Sub-components are designated by one or more suffixes with the primary label, starting with lowercase letters for the 2nd hierarchical level and then numbers for the 3rd. For example, if there is a triple star system in which two stars orbit each other closely while a third star is in a more distant orbit, the two closely orbiting stars would be considered a component with two subcomponents. They would receive the designations Aa and Ab, while the third star would receive the designation B. (Note that, for historical reasons, this standard is not always strictly followed. For example, the three members of the Alpha Centauri triple star system are conventionally referred to as Alpha Centauri A, B and C while the formal standard would give their designations as Alpha Centauri Aa, Ab and B respectively.)

Following an extension of the above standard, an exoplanet's name is normally formed by taking the name of its parent star and adding a lowercase letter. The first planet discovered in a system is given the designation "b" and later planets are given subsequent letters. If several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size.

For instance, in the 55 Cancri system the first planet – 55 Cancri b – was discovered in 1996; two additional farther planets were simultaneously discovered in 2002 with the nearest to the star being named 55 Cancri c and the other 55 Cancri d; a fourth planet was claimed (its existence was later disputed) in 2004 and named 55 Cancri e despite lying closer to the star than 55 Cancri b; and the most recently discovered planet, in 2007, was named 55 Cancri f despite lying between 55 Cancri c and 55 Cancri d. As of April 2012 the highest letter in use is "j", for the unconfirmed planet HD 10180 j (HD 10180 h is the confirmed planet with the highest letter).

If a planet orbits one member of a binary star system, then an uppercase letter for the star will be followed by a lowercase letter for the planet. Examples are 16 Cygni Bb and HD 178911 Bb. Planets orbiting the primary or "A" star should have 'Ab' after the name of the system, as in HD 41004 Ab. However, the "A" is sometimes omitted; for example the first planet discovered around the primary star of the Tau Boötis binary system is usually called simply Tau Boötis b.

If the parent star is a single star, then it may still be regarded as having an "A" designation, though the "A" is not normally written. The first exoplanet found to be orbiting such a star could then be regarded as a secondary sub-component that should be given the suffix "Ab." For example, 51 Peg Aa is the host star in the system 51 Peg; and the first exoplanet is then 51 Peg Ab. Since most exoplanets are in single star systems, the implicit "A" designation was simply dropped, leaving the exoplanet name with the lower-case letter only: 51 Peg b.

A few exoplanets have been given names that do not conform to the above standard. For example, the planets that orbit the pulsar PSR 1257 are often referred to with capital rather than lowercase letters. Also, the underlying name of the star system itself can follow several different systems. In fact, some stars (such as Kepler-11) have only received their names due to their inclusion in planet-search programs, previously only being referred to by their celestial coordinates.

 Source

Of course, such standards may change over the next 1000 years, the article from which the above quote is taken already includes some proposals for new future standards...

[Thargoid]

Thanks, most interesting albeit not as "sci fi" as some of the other suggestions. But certainly one to consider.

OK another request - can anyone think of OXPs which add specific planet or moon entities which will need distinct naming? Currently the only one I can think of is Tianve.oxp (the addition of the pulsar), but are there any others out there?

[Smivs]

Doesn't Assassins Guild add several?

[Commander McLane]

Tibedied Prime (Tibedied alone would not be wise, as it is already the name of the sun)

No, it's the name of the planet. The suns don't have names in Elite/Oolite.

Arguably nor do planets in Elite/Oolite, it's the systems that are named. But the names are used fairly interchangably as in vanilla Oolite and Elite there is only one planet, main station and sun per system so it doesn't matter.

Arguable it's the planets that are named.

Exhibit A: a randomly chosen planet description

The planet Esbiza is most famous for its vast rain forests.

The random choices for this part of the description are

Code: Select all

            "%H",
            "The planet %H",
            "The world %H",
            "This planet",
            "This world"

"The system" or "The sun" are not among them. Also, it's distinctly not "%H's planet", in which the %H clearly would mean the sun.

That's as canonical as it gets, because it's straight from the game itself. Thus I rest my case.

I agree, though, that for all practical purposes the names can be used fairly interchangeably.

[Selezen]

Tibedied Prime (Tibedied alone would not be wise, as it is already the name of the sun)

No, it's the name of the planet. The suns don't have names in Elite/Oolite.

Arguably nor do planets in Elite/Oolite, it's the systems that are named. But the names are used fairly interchangably as in vanilla Oolite and Elite there is only one planet, main station and sun per system so it doesn't matter.

You begin your career, your ship equipped with a single forward-firing pulse laser, 3 homing missiles, 7 light years of fuel, and the sum of 100 Credits (CR), ready to embark from a space station in orbit around the planet Lave.

Pilot licences are issued only at the planet Lave,

6 invokes a planetary status card.

I could go on...

Manual says the "item" in the map is named for the planet. Suns are unnamed, which leaves it open for Frontier to use the star's name.

[Thargoid]

Although from a technical viewpoint, system.name is defined as the well known name, and system.mainPlanet.name is undefined.

But as noted, for a 1 planet/1 sun system it's rather interchangeable anyway. And suns will remain unnamed anyway, even after I've finished messing about.