I want to gather everything about ship naming. First, let just list everything that can be in the name.
* family (starship, guardian, etc)
* chassis (corvette, battleship, bot, frigate, etc)
* role (bomber, raider, etc)
* weapon (beam frigate, grenade launcher, etc)
* perk (armored ship, tractor platform, teleporting battlestation, medic frigate, Zenith paralyzer, etc)
* pseudo-perk (spider for engine damage, widow for paralyzing tractor, leech for reclamation, etc)
* race (prepended, sometimes only distinctive part: Zenith Starship, Spire Starship)
* upgrade prefix (new in AIW2)
I said elsewhere that I would support moving the race indicator out of the name (moved maybe somewhere in the ID card).
Family name sounds like a chassis, but as most fleetships' chassis are used as thematic only, that might be confusing.
I don't like the accumulation of upgrade prefixes. For items in Bionic Dues, that sounds fun and doesn't get in the way. But here I feel that would become silly and cumbersome very fast. My personal taste would be to not add prefixes when upgrades are added (but that would require another way of telegraphing that) or to limit upgrades at one per ship (but that's a whole other story).
Weapon and perk are important to "resume" the ship (teleporting leech clearly convey what the ship do). Role, also, but less technical (raider or bomber convey how the ship should be used). Chassis is currently entirely thematic but might be turned as technical indications (like all frigates have speed X, all corvettes have armor Y, etc).
Connected ideas:
* Merging fleetships and starships would solve the confusing chassis/family distinction. Other families (like guardians) might have the family name as a mandatory chassis, but they are faction-reserved families, so that might be okay. I don't know.
* Upgrades' prefixes have a big impact here.
