User blog:Lamosq1027/Hero Vehicle pages being renamed to better reflect in-game names

A notable change will be occurring to how DICE's Star Wars Battlefront II hero vehicle pages are titled. Pages such as Black One and Actis-class Light_Interceptor will be renamed to follow a name scheme similar to Iden Versio's TIE/ln Fighter, with the hero who is piloting the ship placed first and then the ship model after it.

This is so wiki pages are more consistent with how their in-game subjects are referred. This new name scheme should also make it easier for readers who may not be too familiar with the technical names of the hero ships to look up their desired hero vehicle.

Redirects such as Black One will remain to further assist in finding hero vehicle articles.

Rationale
Although there has been confusion in the past with how hero vehicles should be referred (largely because of the two different and conflicting ways DICE/Criterion refer to hero vehicles in-game), this new name scheme should bridge the two different primary ways.



The first primary way hero vehicles are referred to in Battlefront II is in the Collection menu. Hovering over a hero vehicle reveals the hero who controls the vehicle (e.g. Boba Fett) and then in smaller text under that the vehicle model (e.g. Slave I).

The second primary way is in a match. Here, only the hero who controls the vehicle (e.g. Boba Fett) is shown ("Boba Fett is available").

Now these two ways by themselves are problematic for the wiki. Using the Boba Fett example, we cannot title the hero vehicle page by the hero who controls the vehicle (e.g. "Boba Fett") because there is already a page titled Boba Fett about the actual hero character. Using that naming scheme for other hero vehicles such as Poe Dameron's would give the false impression that Poe Dameron is a hero character like Leia Organa or Luke Skywalker when he actually isn't. We also cannot title the hero vehicle page by the in-game ship model (e.g. "Slave I") because other hero vehicles such as Poe Dameron's T-70 X-Wing would simply be "T-70 X-Wing", and there is already a page for that. The name is also not specific enough that defines that the page is about a hero.



This has since resulted in an inconsistent way of naming hero vehicles. Names such as Black One come from in-game quips and canon sources which are not applicable to other hero vehicles that do not have named vehicles, and names such as Actis-class Light Interceptor are not specific enough to the hero to which they belong (Yoda).

The new name scheme best combines the two methods in which hero ships are referred and also shows up in a search for that hero ("Hmm, I don't know the name for Yoda's ship but I do know Yoda pilots it, so I'll search up Yoda and see what search suggestions appear. Ah, Yoda's [ship name], that must be it.")/ The name scheme also draws inspiration from how hero weapons are referred in Battlefront II (Boba Fett's EE-3).

In context


This change comes as I finally get around to uploading the Star Card stats for vehicle classes and the hero vehicles.

In the process of looking at the vehicle Boost Cards to figure out how to organize their respective pages, I discovered that the vehicle Boost Card stats are a bit more complicated than the regular trooper classes or regular heroes. Although it is easy in the sense that many vehicles feature the same Star Card and its stats (such as Reinforced Hull, with the only thing changing from class to class is the Star Card art), other vehicles feature the same Star Card but depending on the actual vehicle model, the stat for that Star Card (i.e. what the Star Card affects) changes. This is because Criterion made abilities dependent on ship model rather than ship class. So for example even though the Republic ARC-170 and Separatist Vulture Droid are part of the Fighter vehicle class, the Fighter Weapon Systems Boost Card (unique to the Fighter class) behaves differently between the two since they different abilities.

For those like me who never really got into Starfighter Assault or vehicles in general, discovering the nuance of the vehicle Boost Cards, and then realizing it is due to the nuance of the vehicles themselves&mdash;it really makes you respect the devs and the work they put into this game.

The plan is to have all the vehicle Star Cards uploaded before mid-August.

Lamosq1027