Vessel Auto Renamer [1.12.x]

[IO]

A small plugin, similar to the Launch Numbering, but less automagical and with finer control.

It lets you specify a naming template in the VAB/SPH. E.g. you launched "Kerbochod 1" and "Kerbochod 2". With a naming template like "Kerbochod %d", the plugin will search the name history and rename it to "Kerbochod 3" on launch.

There are currently 3 ways of specifying the naming templates (from the lowest priority to the highest):

1) Vessel description in the editor: the plugin will search for a string within "[]"

2) Vessel name in the editor

3) Part's vessel naming: an underused stock feature that lets you launch a vessel with a different name than in the editor.

Multiple naming schemes are supported:

• %d - Arabic numerals
• %0nd - zero padded Arabic numerals, replace "n" with the minimal width (e.g. %02d)
• %x, %X - hexadecimal numerals, lower and upper case, can also be zero padded (e.g. %02X)
• %b, %B - binary numerals, %B for padded to 8 digits, %b for unpadded (thanks AMPW-german)
• %r, %R - Roman numerals, lower and upper case
• %a, %A - Latin alphabet letters, lower and upper case
• %g, %G - Greek alphabet letters, lower and upper case (α, β, γ, etc)
• %w, %W - Greek alphabet letters as words, lower case and capitalized ("Alpha", "Beta", etc)
• %p, %P - NATO Phonetic Alphabet, lower case and capitalized ("Alpha", "Bravo", "Charlie", etc)
• %l, %L - legacy WWII CCB (ICAO) Phonetic Alphabet, lower case and capitalized ("Able", "Bake", "Charlie", "Dog", etc)
• %c, %C - Russian alphabet letters, lower and upper case (А, Б, В, Г, etc)
• %% to escape %

Note about the vessel naming:

"Configure Vessel Naming" feature also lets you configure separate names for a "mother-ship" and decoupled from it "daughter-ships" right inside the editor. If you specify the naming like so:

the relays will get numbers automatically in the order of decoupling (which is quite random when decoupling all at once). The one annoyance with this approach was: vessel naming doesn't support part symmetry so you'd need to name each relay individually, so... I made it follow part symmetry. Now you can name one part and the naming will be copied to its symmetry counterparts (assuming they have no configured names already, so you are still able to set different names manually).

Another annoyance is: changing vessel's name in the editor changes the highest priority configured naming. So if your naming gets mangled blame Squad not me.

Download

spacedock

CKAN

github source

Edited July 31 by IO
update

[marxman28]

Curious about a few things.

1. What happens if you go beyond Z with Latin letters? Does it go back to A or does it go AA, AB, AC, etc? Same with Greek letters.
2. Any chance you'll add the NATO phonetic alphabet so like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc? You could probably use %p/%P for that.

[Cruesoe]

I would be interested to know how this differs from :

 

[theJesuit]

10 hours ago, Cruesoe said:

I would be interested to know how this differs from :

The zero padding,  the greek numbers  methinks.  I really like Project Manager's setup but i love the Greek alphabet option here.

[IO]

On 7/14/2024 at 7:34 AM, marxman28 said:

What happens if you go beyond Z with Latin letters? Does it go back to A or does it go AA, AB, AC, etc? Same with Greek letters.

Right now it's not supported so it defaults to an empty string. "26 ought to be enough for anybody", but yeah I should probably handle that case too. Especially since I support Roman numerals up to 3999.

On 7/14/2024 at 7:34 AM, marxman28 said:

Any chance you'll add the NATO phonetic alphabet so like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc? You could probably use %p/%P for that.

Sure, trivial to do. If someone wants Chinese numerals or some other naming scheme I can add them too.

On 7/14/2024 at 12:20 PM, Cruesoe said:

I would be interested to know how this differs from :

Mainly in that it has more flexible formatting options and more naming schemes. E.g. with template like "MU%d Relay" I named my Mun relays "MU1 Relay", "MU2 Relay" and "MU3 Relay". You can also have something like "Kerblink %0d2dX" which turns into "Kerblink 01X", "Kerblink 02X", etc. Not possible with other mods I think.

TBH I probably wouldn't bother with implementing this plugin had I known Project Manager existed.

[IO]

Updated to include NATO Phonetic Alphabet and excel-column-like handling for the Latin and Greek alphabets.

[desert]

Some more ideas:

Allied military alphabet (1943 CCB US-UK) (Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog etc), I think its pretty good and distinct for early rocketry (it was used historically for rockets and also for nuclear tests), for example for RP-1 career.

You can add Russian alphabet (А, Б, В, Г, etc. these letters were at least used historically for numbering of rocket stages). There is also Russian phonetic alphabet (Anna, Boris, Vasily, etc), but I'm not sure if it fits well with the rocketry, because it wasn't really used in for numbering historically.

I've got another idea, but it would probably be harder to implement: launch dates. Have year and day as separate keys (%Y, %D) to allow player to decide what format they would prefer.

Edited July 15 by desert

[IO]

Ok a major update, I edited the OP with the details but tl;dr: added two more ways of specifying the naming template and added support for the vessel naming stock feature.

On 7/15/2024 at 9:28 PM, desert said:

Allied military alphabet (1943 CCB US-UK) (Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog etc), I think its pretty good and distinct for early rocketry (it was used historically for rockets and also for nuclear tests), for example for RP-1 career.

Added.

On 7/15/2024 at 9:28 PM, desert said:

You can add Russian alphabet (А, Б, В, Г, etc. these letters were at least used historically for numbering of rocket stages).

Will add later. EDIT: done

On 7/15/2024 at 9:28 PM, desert said:

I've got another idea, but it would probably be harder to implement: launch dates. Have year and day as separate keys (%Y, %D) to allow player to decide what format they would prefer.

Good idea, but it's indeed more complicated to implement. Maybe later.

Edited July 30 by IO

[marxman28]

According to the OP, both the NATO phonetic alphabet and the WWII phonetic alphabet use the same %. Not sure how that might affect naming since I haven't updated mine yet.

[IO]

19 minutes ago, marxman28 said:

According to the OP, both the NATO phonetic alphabet and the WWII phonetic alphabet use the same %. Not sure how that might affect naming since I haven't updated mine yet.

Oops, it's an error in the post, it has its own letter. Fixed, thanks.

[PicoSpace]

A Couple Ideas:
1.  Would be nice to have a toggle that the first craft in a series either doesn't have a number (Think Enterprise, Enterprize A, B, C, D etc) or start with "0" depending on the scheme choosen (if it has a "0" or not character).

2. Debris is also numbered So "Munallo 1" would become "Munallo 1 Debris 1" so that later its easier to find specific debris if you say drop fuel or valuable part in orbit from an earilier mission.

3. It would be nice if there was a config file where you could assign agencies (Mission Flag) a numbering scheme which woudl be automatically applied to any ship [Vessel Name here]

So someone would save the ship as...
"[Munallo] Relay System" and as they choose a stock KSP agency which would apply "%d" and result in the Vessel being called "Munallo 1"

If you could insert that functionality I would be willing to write the config and hunt down agencies for you.

PS. Here are some Additional Number Schemes to Consider:
Random Characters (Non-repeating, when you run out of characters jump to 2 characters and so on)
Base 36 (0-9, A-Z)
Runic Alphabet
Arabic Alphabet
Hebrew Alphabet
Morse Code
Braille
Chinese Numbers
Japanese Hiragana Alphabet
Japanese Katakana Alphabet

Edited August 1 by PicoSpace
Additional Ideas & Clarifications

[marxman28]

Can you make it so that we can still get ordered numbering if we have concurrent flights? For example, I have a crewed spacecraft series called Pegasus. If Pegasus 1 goes to, say, an LKO space station and I launch another Pegasus to a polar space station while Pegasus 1 is currently docked to the LKO station, that polar station Pegasus is going to be renamed Pegasus 1, even though it would be considered Pegasus 2.

[IO]

19 hours ago, marxman28 said:

Can you make it so that we can still get ordered numbering if we have concurrent flights?

WDYM? It is exactly how the mod works. I did some testing and it appears to still work (although I spotted there's an issue with duplicate entries in the naming history). Do you have a setup in which it didn't work?

22 hours ago, PicoSpace said:

1.  Would be nice to have a toggle that the first craft in a series either doesn't have a number (Think Enterprise, Enterprize A, B, C, D etc) or start with "0" depending on the scheme choosen (if it has a "0" or not character).

I support renaming, so if you launch "Enterprise A", you can rename it after the launch to "Enterprise" and if you want the next one to be "Enterprise A" instead of "Enterprise B", you can again rename it. The numbering will restart at B for the subsequent launches.

If a player needs special handling for a vessel they can rename the vessel themselves. It will be easier for them too rather than trying to remember the format for this one special case.

23 hours ago, PicoSpace said:

2. Debris is also numbered So "Munallo 1" would become "Munallo 1 Debris 1" so that later its easier to find specific debris if you say drop fuel or valuable part in orbit from an earilier mission.

Seems a little out of scope, but I could add that as an option.

23 hours ago, PicoSpace said:

3. It would be nice if there was a config file where you could assign agencies (Mission Flag) a numbering scheme which woudl be automatically applied to any ship [Vessel Name here]

I'm not sure how much interest is there for such a feature.

23 hours ago, PicoSpace said:

PS. Here are some Additional Number Schemes to Consider:

I should probably just add an option to define them via .cfg file.

[marxman28]

3 hours ago, IO said:

WDYM? It is exactly how the mod works. I did some testing and it appears to still work (although I spotted there's an issue with duplicate entries in the naming history). Do you have a setup in which it didn't work?

So here's what I'm doing.

1. I launch my first Pegasus spacecraft, its destination a polar orbit space station. The game automatically renames my spacecraft Pegasus 1 at launch.  Pegasus 1 docks at the polar space station where the station naming priority takes over. Pegasus 1 is still in orbit when I launch my second Pegasus.
2. I launch the second Pegasus for Minmus. However, the game renames what is supposed to be Pegasus 2 to Pegasus 1, as if I never launched Pegasus 1 before. I'm forced to rename it manually. Pegasus 2 heads to Minmus and returns to Kerbin.

I'm a little concerned that if I launch Pegasus 3, the renaming system will treat it as Pegasus 2 and I will have to do another manual rename.

[IO]

41 minutes ago, marxman28 said:

So here's what I'm doing.

1. I launch my first Pegasus spacecraft, its destination a polar orbit space station. The game automatically renames my spacecraft Pegasus 1 at launch.  Pegasus 1 docks at the polar space station where the station naming priority takes over. Pegasus 1 is still in orbit when I launch my second Pegasus.
2. I launch the second Pegasus for Minmus. However, the game renames what is supposed to be Pegasus 2 to Pegasus 1, as if I never launched Pegasus 1 before. I'm forced to rename it manually. Pegasus 2 heads to Minmus and returns to Kerbin.

Yeah, I can't reproduce it. Tested with and without vessel naming configured and I get "Pegasus 2" while "Pegasus 1" is docked to a station. Vessel name is stored in the history on launch, it doesn't matter if it docks something or not. The only 2 things that can alter history are decoupling (or undocking) or renaming the vessel. Neither should apply here from as far as I can tell. Maybe the history somehow got corrupted and it fails to save? If the history is empty (which should be the case right after installation) the plugin will look at all currently existing vessels to populate it, so the docked vessels get skipped (until they undock). The game stores docked vessel info, so I guess that part could get improved, but again, shouldn't matter in this case.

1 hour ago, marxman28 said:

I'm a little concerned that if I launch Pegasus 3, the renaming system will treat it as Pegasus 2 and I will have to do another manual rename.

Unless history got corrupted it should get the "3".