2mo ago

Idris Ship Naming Incoming

Idris Ship Naming Incoming - Star Citizen Spectrum

If you own an Idris, the ability to name your ship will be opened up to groups of players depending on when you first pledged for the game:

Aegis Idris Naming Waves
Wave 1: May 27th-29th 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2012 pledges + Golden Ticket holders)
Wave 2: May 30th-June 1st 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2013 pledges)
Wave 3: June 2nd-June 4th 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2014, 2015, 2016 pledges)
Wave 4: June 5th-June 7th 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 pledges)
Wave 5: June 8th-June 10th 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 pledges)
Wave 6: June 11th-June 13th 4 PM UTC / 9 AM Pacific (2025 pledges and Invictus Launch Week 2955 pledges)

3 comments

I've always found the way they're approaching ship naming to be really weird, they seem to have been dithering about with it for years. Why don't they just set up a banned words list and let it loose? Sure it won't be 100% perfect but then they can learn as they go. They seem to be making it much more complicated than it needs to be TBH.
- What's their current approach?
  I'm not a fan of just setting up a banned word list and setting it loose, namely because of the Scunthorpe problem.
  If there is a banned word list, it should be for complete words and not try to find matches within longer words.
  Also, it's generally trivial to get around those lists by substituting letters for numbers.
  The best way to handle it would be to give players an in-game reporting mechanic.
  If they wanted some automation, they could use an LLM to flag any suspicious names for human review (but they definitely shouldn't just automate the whole process in the way that Reddit does).
  
  I just meant the way that they've only rolled it out for a handful of ships since it was introduced (in 2021 I believe?) and that they seem to stagger it in waves for some reason. I'm not sure why it seems to be such an undertaking, but presumably they have their reasons.
  But yeah I agree, I think maybe some combination of a base list of banned words, some kind of LLM/automation and in-game reporting, combined with human review to pick up on context is probably about as good as you can do. I think it's a system that kind of has to evolve and improve as you go as well, so probably the sooner they start the process the less trouble it'll be later on.