Shipbucket

Posted this here for those who will draw Philippine Navy ships and wondering how to properly assign names and designations for their ships. This could also help people doing AU versions of the Philippine Navy, since there are provisions for designations for types of ships the Philippine Navy doesn't have at the present (like aircraft carriers).
http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/offices/sps/rotc ... Nships.pdf

we are using a modified Internationale designations when we loading a drawing up to SB.

And this .pdf shows just how wrong that is.

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Currently we are trying to use the "international" standard as much as possible, but naturally variations exists, and these are namely with navies that have their own dedicated designation system for ships they've produced to comply these given designations (meaning soviet % russian navies). In all credit to Philiphinians, but despite having their own designation methods, sofar they've not produced ships themselves that would for somereason fall out from other international practices, but instead their inventory have been largely made out of vessels that go with ease by the standard designation practices.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

The problem is that the USN system that we're using forces us to either squeeze ships into categories that simply doesn't apply or add a new one every time something odd comes up. The first solution is wrong for many reasons, chief amongst them the fact that USN designations are completely arbitrary and it gives the false impression that all navies operate the same.
Unsurprisingly, they don't. Point in case, the USN does not have a designation for any kind of long range patrol vessel since that mission falls under the Coast Guard.

Adding more designations doesn't really work either since it defeats the the primary purpose of using a unified system in the first place. To make it easier to sort the drawings. The 200+ designations we currently use (Not including the Russian/Soviet system) makes this all but impossible.

I can't help but notice that you're quick to single out the Soviet/Russian navy as being incompatible with the "international" system because they operate differently. I hold that this is equally true for pretty much every navy out there. It's a lot more visible between Russia and the US because we're used to the East/West divide.
Everyone agrees that straight comparisons between the SSSR and the USN is impossible if not downright absurd, yet assumes that it's a perfectly fine when comparing say Norway and Yemen or India and Chile.

And let's not even get into the absurdity of trying to shoehorn modern warships into 100 year old categories that weren't all that well defined to begin with.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

The "international standard" system we are using is not the USN system, but more of mixture of it, the NATO practice and general regoconition ways used by classical naval publications like Jane's and Weyers.

I know, the western systems are also only "superficially" similar to each others...but the main issue here, is that what sort of ships are in question. In Philiphine navy, the inventory is almost 90 % of USN orgin and from other western nations, and thus using the orginal designations causes little if no proplems. The bigger the navies get, the bigger the variations are, but then again, its usually down to wheter the navy is producing their own warships (not to mention warship categories) or purchasing them off-the-shelf, from navies, or companies alligned closely to some navies who use the USN and NATO designations with ease. And in western world, outside NATO and the former commonwealth navies (India and Australia), are really few nations that actually produce classes of warships spanning trought wider time.
Japan comes to mind, but they've also adapted rather simple and idionomic USN-based designation system that is easy to use within SB... We as SB are not trying to get sense to the commonly used designations, but to use them in the best ways we can. Its the matter of the navies in question to decide, how 100 year old designations holds ground in modern days, not us hobbyists...otherwise we fall into rather comically pretentious pendatism that would just makes us look fools. Thus following some guideline is important and thats why the current system we use here. I don't want to be disrespectfull to various smaller fleets, but the crude fact is, that the designation systems they migth have to offer for oddball gunboats and minelaunches doesen't really justify to complicate our system, since by most of the time, their boats falls into perfectly internationally recognisable categories.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Yes, all the types of ship mentioned in the .pdf have international designations. As I wrote earlier, this would be of help to those making a Philippine Navy AU using those designations.
And BTW, the PN has Philippine-built ships in their inventory. Check the link below:
http://www.navy.mil.ph/news.php?news_id=362

But by cramming ships from widely different navies into our current system we're doing just that. I've got more than 100 PMs worth of discussion on whether a ship should have this designation or another sitting in my inbox because of it.

Given the current limitations of the archive the only real solution that I can see would be to use the designation system that the nation in question is using. that's really the only way to make it accurate and it won't actually be harder to use since, with more than two hundred designations and counting, I'll have to look it up no matter which system we use.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Not really, if you know how to use our designation system. If i can, I would like to all of you to take look at timothy's thread about our naming conventions and my addenda in it. The main point is, that our system is flexible, and it allows bending into direction or another, as long as our members know what they are doing. If Jane's annual yearbooks could do it, then surely we can as well. Since its the only alternative there is, when you look the situation from magnitude we are facing with the bucket. This matter has been ever present in the admin. section discussion, and our current system is not a product of something whimsical declaration, but by longer range of insigthfull imput from our staff.
In sense it would be; and to work, it woudl require the people to be familar with hundreds of different languages and naval terminology, which in sure we all are
So in practice, the soviet/russian difference is there in more of educational purposes, us children of post-cold war need to really know the opposite story as well, now as nothing prevent us from seeking the knowledge. But since soviet/russian fleet ranked the top five of all navies of all era, such is justifiable; but the same reasons and motives don't apply that painlessly down to smaller navies. So again, one has to look this from all angles, not just from one.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"