Unlike many of my comrades, most of my ship names are chosen for whimsy, and several of them are inside jokes. For example, my Federation alien captains the U.S.S. Ramming Speed, named as such because it is a Nebula, and the only way to do damage with a Nebula is to use the ramming speed skill.

Now I can also be serious with my ship names. I decided to go a different way with my latest character, naming his ships after famous mathematicians. Still leveling, he is currently captaining the R.R.W. Schur.

Here's what I use for a cruiser missile boat:

Excelsior Missile Cruiser (XLMC)

Any Captain can fly this ship while using their innate class abilities.

Equipment:
Borg engine, deflector, and shield. Borg 3-piece set bonuses:
- More hull repair
- On taking damage, chance to automatically repair hull and damage resistance once per minute
- When shields are low, chance to automatically repair shields and apply free Hazard Emitters
Shield options:
- Omega Force shield for plasma resist, speed & turn boost while under fire
- free Jem Hadar Shield for absorption and bonus Damage Resistance

Weapons:
Mount launchers both fore and aft to throw salvoes across 180 degrees of space while charging through a furball. Use a matched set of a single damage type for max damage boost from consoles.
Feel free to mix in:
- Harghpeng torpedo
- BioNeural Warhead (tricobalt damage type)
- Disruptor turrets if you have excess power in the Weapons column

Consoles:
- Eng: Ablative Armor (max 3) or SIF Generator or RCS
- Sci: Field Generators or Emitter Arrays
- Tac: Damage type to match your torpedoes

BOFF skills:
Eng: EPtS1, Aux2Damp1, EPtS3, RSP3
Eng: EPtE1, Aux2Damp1
Eng: EPtE1
Tac: TacTeam1, (TorpSpread 2 & 3) or (THY 2 & 3)
Sci: (HE 1 & 2) or (TSS 1 & 2) or (Tractor 1 & 2)

Useful DOFFs:
- Projectile Weapons Officer reduces torpedo reload time
- Conn Officer boosts and reduces cooldown of TacTeam

Strategy:

The XLMC employs DOFFs to spray torpedoes as fast as the game allows. With spreads it can sweep spam or hit multiple targets with plasma fire or chroniton snares. With THY photons or quantums it can tear down structures in STFs or smash the hull of a PvP focus target. With transphasics it can ignore the massive shields that are a torpedo’s bane and rip the hull out from under them.

With its speed and turn boosting abilities, the XLMC zooms through a furball outrunning its own torpedoes to deliver spike damage on target like a dive bomber.

"FLY HER APART THEN!"

Tactics:

Power Levels
- 15, 100, 15, 70
- If you have traits/etc that boost Shield power, shift any excess into Aux for more healing. If you max Aux, dump excess into Engines.

Maneuvers
- Chain 2x Auxiliary to Dampeners for 100% uptime
- Chain 2x EPtE for 100% uptime
With both of these, Excelsior gets a cruising speed of 80 and turn rate of 28 degrees/sec

Defense
- Chain 2xEPtS for 100% uptime shield hardening
- RSP2 in emergencies

Science Options
- Hazard Emitters is a hull heal, damage resistance, and DoT cleanse for self or allies
- TSS is shield regeneration and damage resistance for self or allies
- Tractor beams can snare fast-moving targets, lowering their defense

Offense
- Spam TacTeam as often as your Conn Officers have it ready (every 14 seconds with 2 Purple DOFFs)
- Chain 2xTorpSpread to fire a spread every 15 seconds
- Train another Tac BOFF with THY2 & 3 for single-target demolition wherever this is more useful than spreads

Torpedoes

While torpedoes do massive damage to exposed hulls, they will also dent shields. Most players underestimate the amount of damage a torpedo salvo can do to a shield. The XLMC launches them so fast, with THY it can have ten to twenty torpedoes in flight at a time. Fully buffed, each quantum carries about 9k kinetic damage. If any of those crit, they will tear down a shield and expose the hull to the rest of the salvo.

Projectile DOFFs decrease reload times. With 2 Purple Projectile DOFFs and the free Blue (from the mission “Facility 4028”), there is about a 50% chance of a 4-5 second reduction in reload time with every launch. Averaged out, this means you can fire Photons nonstop, and other types nearly as fast.

Plasma torps may lack in terms of kinetic damage, but shields stop most of that anyway. Plasma sticks to the hull, stacks, and burns. This build can pile on plasma fire faster than it can be cleared for constant burning. Spreads can't be shot down, and will burn pets. Plasma DoTs can also crit.

Masses of Chronitons are very effective at slowing Borg herds or fleeing escorts to give you more time to kill them.

Quantum high-yield salvoes are a damage spike. Properly timed, the XLMC can launch back-to-back THY in a massive salvo of spike damage.

Transphasic loadouts are currently popular. Mount one cluster torp both fore and aft and six rapid-reload transphasics. Use two pieces of the free Breen set for transphasic damage boost. These torpedoes somewhat negate shields and there is no way to resist this specific damage type.

Quote by SiranNataan

There was a thread about this within the past month or so but I couldn't find it. Seemed smart to ask to merge them, but, like I said, I can't find it. Anyone know what thread I'm talking about?

Yes. The original thread is here.

Aztroz named his ships after computer scientists, among them:

USS Turing (Sovereign): named after Alan Turing, a cryptologist and martyr for the gay cause
USS Rivest, USS Shamir, and USS Adleman (Odyssey 3 Pack): named after the authors of the RSA algorithm. If you've ever made an online purchase, you've used RSA. :)
USS Berners-Lee (Excelsior): named after Tim Berners-Lee, who invented a little thing called the World Wide Web. He was also a very outspoken proponent of secularism.

Keston named his ships after Spanish explorers: Coronado, De Soto, Balboa, Villavicencio. Fun fact: the Villavicencio was supposed to be the USS Vizcaíno, but I couldn't use the accented i in the ship name.

Rennan named all his ships the IKS jagh _____, where jagh is Klingon for enemy. His flagship (Negh'var) currently is the IKS jagh chotwI' (enemy killer). I also love his vor'cha, the IKS jagh nejwI' (enemy seeker).

I'm sure this has been pointed out before, but there seems to be a issue with uploading profile pictures. I have tried in IE, Firefox, and Chrome, all while disabling my firewall, adblocker, and popup blocker.
I have tried uploading pictures in JPEG, Gif, and Tiff format and all 3 fail to upload. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Geography is always a solid go-to.

The Antwerp. The Hokkaido. The Cape Town. The Goteborg. The Zambezi.

Mythology is fun, but I have a great love of non-Western pantheons, Hindu in particular.

The Virabhadra. The Varuna. The Avalokitesvara. The Vajrayudha.

For Klingon, Romulan, and other alien ship names - I use the Randomizer as a starting point for embellishment and variation. I find it anti-immersive to use English for them.

There was a thread about this within the past month or so but I couldn't find it. Seemed smart to ask to merge them, but, like I said, I can't find it. Anyone know what thread I'm talking about?

Parker Captains the Phantom. The name Phantom comes from the BSG series. In the BSG series the Phantom was the Cylon rebel Basestar that joins the Galactica (and eventually replaces it) as they get closer to earth.

Thank you so much! Awesome resources!

Some of my characters use the same ship names for every one they captain:

Dragon: Star Hammer
Butcher: Tannhauser Gate (Originally Tsar Bomba)
Trillian: Queen Emeraldas
Angel Silhouette: Vashta Nerada or Vorax Umbra

Others always have their ship named along a theme:

Titus' ships are given Roman names (Imperator)
Bandit's ships are themed... Around the Smokey and the Bandit franchise or are named after cars. (eg: Firebird)
Gorgos' ships are named after prehistoric birds or flying reptiles (Toruk)
Guan'thwei's ships are named for predatory fish. (Piranha)

If you're looking to learn web development, I wrote a little blog post here on how I learned and some great resources out there.

Any help would be great! I think I'm like you where I have a designer brain, but I'm just curious and like to reverse engineer stuff! I would love to build my own programs. At the moment I'm reading lots of books on programming. Got through a few HTML5/CSS and Javascript books so far. Taking the courses on codecadey.com as well. I'm really trying to come up with an interactive map for commanders to use in GW2 to show where they want troops to go to in real time by use of pins that they mark on the map or notes. Kinda like my temporary solution here: https://realtimeboard.com/app/5852704/My-first-board

Whatever programming languages you recommend for me, I will delve into. I went to school for graphic design... kind of thinking of a career switch due to demand in my area being low.

Thank you again so so so much~! =D

~Elquin

I hated the first one with a passion, and mistakenly I saw it alone. Big mistake. I was so enraged during the film that I kept ordering bourbon and cokes and got drunk and had to take a cab home, further enraging me. When Vulcan blew up, I went catholic mexican widow and had an "AYE DIOS MIO POR QUE" moment.

With the second movie, I just tossed all hope of it being good into the toilet and flushed. I also went with a group of friends and we all mercilessly made fun of its stupidity, which made the experience 'fun'. That said, I hated the second movie.

Why? plot holes. And we are not talking tiny ass ant holes by the sidewalk that you have to nitpick look for. I am talking city blocks just falling into the ground. The "writers" cared nothing for continuity or intelligence, even in their own script! Forget canon (oh wait, they did), make your damn plot fit within itself!

Hopefully since JJ Abrams wont make any money off merchandising he will just go away to Star Wars land, where science is irrelevant and he can make his cowboys in space lens flare adventures. And maybe, just maybe, a real director will come along, hire someone who can write a script worth a damn, and actually make a Star Trek movie.

I am definitely playing Elder Scrolls Online, but might be able to squeeze this in too. If a stonewall guild is made, please post to let us know!

Quote by Elquin

I'm trying to learn some programming and right now I'm at a very basic level. I have a few apps I would like to work on for Stonewall Vanguard and need some guidance as to how to go about completing these projects. If you're willing to give me a hand or point me in the right direction, please private message me so we can get in contact.

Thank you!

Hey Elquin. You play guild wars 2 with me. :)

I can help you out in this field. I can definitely help point you in the right direction. I found out too late that programming was not for me, I'm more of a designer. So, what I have is a series of books and power point presentations that I can send you that can help you out a lot. My instructor at full sail university was a software engineer for Riot Games, and my platform engineer instructor was a employee of Rockstar games.

I've never read the books though I've always seen them in the SciFi section next to my beloved Star Trek and Star Wars genres. I doubt I'll pay to see it either and the Wired article was hilariously intelligent and just the right amount of snarky. OSC's response was hilariously stupid and sullen lol; "How dare you interfere with my efforts to be intolerant of your way of life by being intolerant of mine." That's how I read it anyway.

There is a bug in the tailor (one of a few dozen, actually) that makes it so that, when a fleet inputs the settings for the"lower" (pants and skirts) of a fleet uniform, the settings do not save. When we open the tailor and load the fleet uniform, it goes to a default lower that is *not* part of the uniform. The only way we can get the pants/skirts that are officially part of the uniform is if we input them manually, and the only way we can do that reliable is if we have the specs written out somewhere.

Could DoctorDisaster (who designed it) or one of the fleet captains please write out the specs of the pants/skirts and save them to a place where we have easy access to them?

Thanks.

Thought that I had more..... :-( maybe on my laptop I'll have to check that later today Im at work right now....

On a similar topic to "Weird ship names," I want to also know what kind of names do you use for your starships?

For example, I myself name my FED ships after famous ships from movies and tv shows:

EXAMPLES:

My Prometheus-Class: "Outlaw Star" (named after the titled ship from the anime Outlaw Star.)

My Odyssey-tactical: "Axiom" (named after the Axiom from Wall-E.)

My Wells Temporal Science-ship: "Axalon" (The Maximal ship "Axalon" from Beast Wars.)

My regular Odyssey: "Proteus" (The Proteus ship from 1998's Lost In Space film.)

My Galaxy-X/Venture-Class: "Galactica" (Battlestar Galactica.)

My current ship of choice is my Mobius Temporal Destroyer: "Retrocausality" which is an original name. I based the name off "Causality," which was the fan-name for a temporal time ship on a star trek fan-series, believing the name to mean the opposite, and give the mirror-universe Mobius-Class the matto: "Screw the Space-Time Continuum! Let's blow shit up!" You get what I mean?


What names do you give your ships?

Hey guys. I've started playing music before and after missions in Ventrilo. If you are in Dwayna's Tavern or The Mists (WvW) you may mute the user "GW2 Audio" to disable the music or TeamSpeak feed for WvW.

I would like to take music requests from the players, so please submit some songs or artists you'd like me to include in my library.

General play time is Thursday and Saturday at 8PM EST until Guild missions and then a few hours after.

Crystal Desert is in a constant battle to protect their homelands and conquer far away places. Keeping up the fight is a team effort and requires the support of the warriors of Crystal Desert willing to fight for honor, glory and country!

Stonewall Vanguard is starting to muster up it's troops and enter the battle for Crystal Desert. Below you will find some information that should be useful for those new and old to the WvW scene within SWVG.

When:
Official WvW runs will take place on Sunday at 7PM EST. WvW is a daily activity and will be organized by the SWVG commander or individuals.

Organization:
SWVG will organize it's troops into teams with specific objectives. In most cases, we will ask those teams to stick together as 5 man groups. We may assign groups to take camps, to pressure forces on different maps or areas of a map, to join zergs during important captures, etc. Team leaders will be assigned for each group, whose job it is to call orders and targets. Team leaders and their followers will all follow the commands of our Master of War (WvW Commander). We will also work together with other guilds under the WvW collective of TDS.

Communication:
Communication is carried out through Ventrilo. Please ensure you are setup and ready by following these instructions: Vent Setup. You are not required to speak in vent, but should be able to listen to your team leader and commander. We will group into "The Mists (WvW)" when participating in WvW. During peak times, the user GW2 Audio will be available and stream the Crystal Desert TeamSpeak channel for important WvW information.

Tips and Guides:
If you are new to WvW or looking for some tools and information, please see below:

Crystal Desert Community - Please signup on the forums and read through guides regarding WvW or desired topic.
WvW Map - Real time maps of WvW. Includes ownership of map objectives, points, and RI time remaining.
Crystal Desert Teamspeak Address - ts.crystal-desert.com (Will be streamed into Vent during peak times. May use Teamspeak to listen in during off-times)