Talk:Shofixti Maidens

Is there any base to the claim that Shofixti have a short life span? Also, you assume the reason ZEX was willing to trade the maidens was because he found the humans to be more interesting. It may very well be that what ZEX said was truthful, and that he wanted the beast, and that acquiring a human was an afterthought. Or it may be that he never intended to give the maidens in the first place. And the male Shofixti does not have to be Tanaka. It could be Katana. -- SvdB 17:01, 5 Sep 2004 (CEST)

Whether the male Shofixti is Tanaka or Katana, there is only one. Katana coming to replace Tanaka is an in-game event that only occurs if you kill Tanaka, and if you don't kill Tanaka Katana never appears. If we're going to accomodate every possible thing that can happen in the game writing about in-game events will be impossible (it's possible that the Captain never saved the Shofixti at all, for instance).

To me it was fairly obvious that ZEX's intentions were to find a way to get a human from the beginning (he hints about it from the very beginning). But whatever.

Indeed, it's possible that the Captain never saved the Shofixti. Unless there's a TFB SC3 at some point, we don't know what story line is true. Therefor I'd rather say "The captain has the option to..." etc.

I'm against half the time writing about SC2 as though it were real life ("Such-and-such happened so many years ago") and half the time talking about it as a game ("The player can choose to do this, in which case this happens"). The encyclopedia feel is fairly dependent on treating the story as a story and pretending that it happened. SC2, in particular, does help us do this -- the game feels nonlinear, but there is a basic story that you are pretty much supposed to go through. Do one thing and you'll see most of the dialogue and the races in the game; do the other and you'll miss much of the script coded into the game. (Hence why the raid-and-pillage approach to the game is not the "correct" one). Toys for Bob also made assumptions about what you did in some parts of the game -- notice how the Melee battle group is called "New Alliance ships" rather than "Empire ships" or "United Federation of World ships". And how the joke Shofixti text in the credits makes an explicit reference to the saving-the-Shofixti storyline even though it's unnecessary to win the game.

As for ZEX' intentions. He does say that he thinks humans are beautiful, and that he collects beautiful things, but when you leave without proposing to get the beast, he just lets you go. I'd expect him to attack you then if you were his goal all along, but he doesn't. At any rate, there's enough doubt not to specify it as a fact. -- SvdB

How does it look... well, I think the layout is ok, but I don't like the titles themselves. "Information" is much too vague imho; the section is specifically about what information leads you to the topic. Perhaps "sources of information"? And "gameplay summary" doesn't really match the section either.

I also think "relevance to the plot" may be slightly better than "impact on the plot".

We may also want to think about having a section for "prerequisites" or "causes" (though maybe not by that name). "What do you have to do?" In the cases where a page describes an event (for instance the Yehat revolution), it would be very relevant, but also here I think a remark like "The captain will only gain access to the Shofixti Maidens once he's handed over ZEX's beauty to Admiral ZEX." would be appropriate. — SvdB 08:25, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

Agreed. The titles are still very fluid in my mind. I also tend towards being a minimalist so I don't like long titles. How about something like "Gamplay notes" for the overall section title? I'll play with the others to see what I can come up with, though I too like the "Relevance to plot" better. Perhaps a "Uses" section would also be useful to describe how, where, when the items are used (through devices submenu, in a conversation, etc). How about simply "Acquistion" for items on what the player needs to do to get it, and something like "Player's actions" or "Requisite actions" for the events - the "uses" and "acquistion" sections could even be subs of that section for items. --Fyzixfighter 21:52, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

I like "gameplay notes". I think we can spare a "the" for "Relevance to the plot" though. It's a bit more erm... title-like. "Uses" sounds good, and "Acquisition" too. I'd rather not talk about "the player" when not necessary. But also "Requisite actions" is not perfect imho. Perhaps "preconditions"?

I'm not in favour of making "uses" and "acquisition" subs of "... actions"; I don't consider "use" (as in "what it can be used for") as a type of "action".

— SvdB 02:26, 14 September 2006 (CEST)

Sounds good to me, though "preconditions" still sounds a little funny. I'm wondering if a lot of that information could simply be subsumed in the "acquisition" section for items. For events, maybe something like your suggested "causes" or "initiation of event" or something similar would work - though I don't think we have too many events for which this would applicable. I'll go through the articles and make the adjustments and see if anything else jumps out at me. --Fyzixfighter 23:16, 15 September 2006 (CEST)