Ships & Modules

Why, yes. Yes I DID like and quote this person to show my support.

CCP FoxFour

1. Maybe, set meta-level as number directly in name (as it was with mining upgrade)
2. Maybe, not so unified? What if:

mundane laser (meta 1)
imperial laser
saint laser
heavenly laser (meta 4)

In Matara, respectively
Rusty Gun (meta 1)
renovated gun
new gun
blue tapedun (meta 4)

it will be better for backstory reasons? Why these nations use common names? :)

Not sure what you mean by this. The mining laser upgrades currently look as so:
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Erin Mining Laser Upgrade (meta 1)
Elara Mining Laser Upgrade (meta 2)
Carpo Mining Laser Upgrade (meta 3)
Aoede Mining Laser Upgrade (meta 4)
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Breaking away from the naming conventions for a second, I like the way the T2 module icons are illustrated with the yellow (II) in the corner.
Perhaps this could be extended for T1 module meta level, maybe a red corner with 1 to 4 denoting its meta level? This could be easily extended to all faction/officer mods with their respective green/blue corner 'tags'.

This would enable an 'at a glance' assesment of all modules in the item hangar, or allow for much quicker looting of the valuable modules from a player wreck without reading the name of every item.

Maybe you just make all guns "elven bow D-grade+3", "dark elven bow C-grade+5" ? Don't change lasers or other gun's names, it's all part of eve world that I loved when I was noob and discovered it for myself. Very very bad idea. In other case I probably find another game.
I recommend use tips with meta-lvl and nothing more.

He means this.
Word "meta" you can delete. And think about put it just in hovering tips or use another color or italic font for meta-number. Renaming lasers is bad idea.

If you want to make meta levels clear, just add them to the name as a version number, excluding T2 and faction. So, Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I.4; Experimental 1MN Afterburner I.3

It's search-friendly, it's newbie-friendly, it's clean, and it saves you from wanting to homogenize how different manufacturers in different empires talk about different kinds of technology, or else committing obscenities like renaming Gremlin Rockets even though that's a separate issue (for which you're already doomed to a heavy sentence as an accomplice in international courts, come the revolution.) Actually it's also veteran friendly: I care about that number in right-click show info attributes tab scroll down more than I care about (or remember) a lot of names in the game. Like, I've looked up that AB's meta level three times this week.

And it would streamline this: right-click show info, variations tab. OK, I want the highest meta level of this mod that doesn't cost too much. But these aren't in order of meta level, and the names don't suggest the meta level, and I don't remember what's what. So, right-click show info, attributes tab, scroll down, find the meta level, go back to the variations tab, right-click view market details, repeat. This would just become, start with meta 4, right-click view market details, right-click on meta 3 view market details, decide on one or the other, done.

EDIT: !!! - right, that AB is the old Cold Gas AB. Back when it was named Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters, I used to always know that what I wanted if I wanted a small AB was the cold-gas one. Now that it's has this 'helpful' name, I don't regard it as having a name at all, and just go straight to the meta level.

Not late at all. Still gathering lots of information and thinking about the best way to do this. All input welcome. :)

I'll chime in here as I did with the previous renaming initiatives.

I agree that making things more clear is an excellent idea. However, just slapping on the same nomenclature as is used on other modules that perform a completely different function is the wrong way to go about it. This is an opportunity to keep the style in eve but make it easier at the same time, not make it more bland.

As was mentioned previously, pick a standard that makes sense for lasers, a standard for projectiles that makes sense for them, etc. The suggestion as stands will mean that for my cheap t1 frig I pick a limited gun and a limited mwd and a limited hardener, and while I'm at it, I'll pick the limited Gallente Combat Frigate, limited damage control, limited Antimatter ammo... It doesn't seem like a complex, richly detailed universe anymore, it seems like we couldn't think of any better way to standardize so we did the same thing for everything.

At the end of the day, it's a small thing and it won't significantly affect gameplay or anything, but there's an opportunity to do things in a way that accomplishes both goals of improving usability and keeping the feel of a rich and complex virtual world.

While we're on the subject of weapon naming, how about removing the word "Artillery" from some of the Autocannon names?