Hello,
I'm a former GalCiv2 player, and will most likely be trying out Sins Of A Solar Empire. I do not have the beta; however.
If this is a feature already included in the beta, please tell me and I will gladly get rid of this post, otherwise, here goes.
I saw a post that suggested fleet names, and I do believe this to be an excellent asthetic addon. I highly suggest you take the 10 minutes to code this in (if you have a 'fleet' object, or any type of fleet logic, which I assume you must, then all that you need to do is add another member field to that object and a draw method and have it update appropriately).
Doing so for ships is also a good idea. I think seeing names on my large capital ships and frigates would be quite a nice addon to the immersive feel of the game. Fighters/Bombers should probably be autonamed by Gamma Leader/Gamma 1, Beta Leader, Beta 2, etc etc. Obviously this naming system might be complex for the fighters, so it might take too much coding time.
I strongly suggest capital ship names and fleet names; however, as it gets you more attached to your ships and surviving a fight. Personally, I would not care that much if I just noticed I had lost one of the destroyers I built, I'll just build another. However, if I lost the 'Contender', a destroy that I have seen through many battles, I would actually care that I lost it.
All those that agree with me, I'd love to see you post so. This would show Yarlen, Blair, and the other programmers for Sins Of A Solar Empire that this feature is a worthy one. This company has always been very responsive to player requests, I'd love to hear your response Stardock!
-unfunf, Computer Science undergraduate, Georgie Institute of Technology.