One of the minor gripes I have with rebellion is the boring and uninspired names for titan abilities. The original game and trinity had some truly amazing names, like "Malice" for the prog and "Ion Bolt" for the akkan. You still have some great ones like "nano leech," "the maw," and "unity mass" in rebellion, but the rest are frankly the most generic, misleading, and un-realistic names in existence.
Take the Ankylon, for example. Furious defense? WTF? Does that mean the titan's crews work faster to repair any damage? But why would they not do that in the first place? And any subjective adjectives should not be used in a name anyway, as it is distracting and breeches the immersion I have in the game. "Inspire and Impair" is another big offender. Why doesn't Ironclad change it to something like "Subliminal Messaging" instead, which not only sounds 100x cooler but can be abbreviated to SM, which people can quickly type in heated multiplayer battles? Just make up some lore explanation where it says that TL alliance with AR made to possible to incorporate advent PsiTech into TEC ships. BOOM! Not only did I just solve the boring name problem, I created a cool lore tidbit that expands the games backstory.
But perhaps the worst offender is the Eradica, with its unholy trinity of "Purification," "Strength of the Fallen," and "Unyielding Will." Names are supposed to describe to people what the ability does. Those three fail at their task miserably. "Purification" tells me jack diddly squat about anything. At 1st glance, the function of this ability seems to be to remove any debuffs on a unit. Or, it might even reduce the enemy's culture spread. But nooooooo, it instead sacrifices a unit so the Eradica can heal! WTF? That name and the effect of the ability have nothing in common whatsoever. Just change it to "Consume" already ironclad, I promise Blizzard won't sue.
What is it with IC/SD and their obsession with long names? Strength of the fallen is too impractical to write during a multiplayer game. This is an especially big problem because the time it takes to write those extra letters could be better spent mashing the feed button, for example. Is stardock really making me write 13 extra letters? C'mon guys...
To end this little rant, I'm going to focus on the Vorastra titan, and its abilites "Desperation," and "Deploy Phase Stabilizer." WTF does that 1st name even mean? If they are desperate, shouldn't the crew be more likely to be afraid, and henceforth mess up in their duties, making the titan weaker? So why does it make them deal splash damage and reduce incoming damage? Even a Neanderthal can see that makes no sense. How does a crew's fear translate into god-like weapons, turning the Vorastra into the #1 titan?
And don't even get me started on the phase stabilizer abiliy. Is that really the best name those guys at stardock could come up with? Not only is it almost as long as "Strength of the Fallen," which makes it impossible to type during multiplayer matches, but it is highly misleading. The word "deploy" implys that I can manually control which area in the grav-well to put the PS, which I can't do in the actual game. Oh yeah, that reminds me to remind stardock to fix that. Why get that ability at all if I can't even place the PS where I want? WTF man?
/rant
TL;DR version
Change titans names, they are boring and sometimes highly misleading. They also take too much time to type during multiplayer
Renaming Titan Abilities
Furious Defense (TL)>>
Inspire and Impair (TL)>> Subliminal Messaging- New cooperation with rebel advent groups has enabled our engineers to insert effective mind-control propaganda into the airwaves.
Desperation (VL)>> Antimatter Injection- A long forgotten secret of injecting antimatter directly into our weapons and hull has enabled our titan to deal splash attacks and take reduced damage.
Deploy Phase Stabilizer (VL)>>
Purification (AR)>> Consume- exactly what is sounds like...
Strength of the Fallen (AR)>> Retribution- The ghosts of our fallen sisters take RETRIBUTION on the enemy fleet
Unyielding Will (AR)>>
Repossession (AL)>> Indoctrination- free publicity from all the mass effect fanboys...
Any help in renaming abilities is greatly appreciated.
