Would love to see a 181st expansion pack with Fel in it and Tie interceptors complete with blood stripes.

 Wow, you guys know the names of those pilots from the battle of Endor.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, everything in starwars hasa name and usually a back story.

Here is my question:  We have lots of cool named pilots for the TIEs and even one from the TIE advanced.  Had we ever heard of them before, or did FFG games make them up.  I hadn't ever heard of any of them.  In fact I hadn't heard of any of the pilots in the Y-wing or one of the pilots for the X-Wing.

It makes sense to me that if FFG is just making up names for these ships that they will do the same for future ships as well.

One last thing: was there a name associated for the pilot in the old TIE Fighter games?  I know there was one for the X-wing game but it really only showed up in the strategy guide.

Maarek Stele is the guy from TIE Fighter and he pilots the TIE Advanced in this game. I don't think FFG is making up names, but my Star Wars specialty is more on Force-users, so I could be mistaken.

So far, all the ace pilots and squadrons mentioned by FFG have been named previously in some source of the so-called "Star Wars Expanded Universe" (everything beyond the six movies that it is considered canon unless George Lucas says otherwise: computer games, comics, books, technical journals, fact files…). So FFG it is not making names, just extracting them from the Expanded Universe sources.

With the exception of Marek Steele, who only appears in the "TIE Fighter" computer game, I think that all the already named pilots appear in the Original Movies.

Garven Dreis is Red Leader in "A New Hope".

"Dutch" Vander is Gold Leader in "A New Hope".

Horton Salm is Grey Leader in "Return of the Jedi".

"Backstabber" and "Mauler Mithel" were Darth Vader's wingmen during the Death Star Trench Run.

"Dark Curse" is the pilot of the TIE Fighter shot down by Wedge during the Battle of Yavin.

"Howlrunner", "Night Beast" and "Winged Gundark" are some of the TIE Fighters chasing the Millenium Falcon when she is fleeing from Bespin.

Agrivar said:

Wow, how do you know all this?  Only Lukas would name the TIE pilots who chased the Falcon in Empire Strikes Back.

(If you made this up I am revoking my wow)

Wookiepedia is a wonderful source. It has entries for all the named pilot and squadrons (and it's my main information source when I'm trying to predict which pilots and squadrons might appear in future expansions.

Interestingly, the "Star Wars: Making Magic" CD-ROM, which was published in 1996, has a pretty extensive encyclopedia section about the Original Trilogy movies in which, along with many other topics, it already appears much information about the identity of unnamed pilots of the movies. So it seems that there is some department in Lucasfilms dedicated to "flesh in" the movies, adding information about who was piloting which ship, or giving a name and identity to all the patrons of the Mos Eisley cantina, and so on.

 I think you will find that a lot of the naming came from WEG Star Wars RPG back in the day and also the Decipher CCG.  That was the first place I learned many of these guys names.  Several books have also been written about many of the side characters from the movies.  Almost everything is seen for at least a moment in the movies as well.

I totally second Wookiepedia as the ultimate reference.  Also note that Lucas does have a department for keeping things straight in the Star Wars universe.  They maintain a Holocron that the EU authors and other licensees are suppose to reference and make sure that Han Solo is not in two places at once.  That thing has got to be getting huge now.

Thanks,
Duncan

 Hmm just a thought, but will we get the fixed lasers for the A-Wing or the version where the cannons can rotate, giving it a front and rear firing arc, but no side firing arc?

Prathin said:

The A-wing is also supposed to be equipped with a jammer designed to blind the sensors of enemy fighters. As this fighter doesn't has an astromech unit, its available upgrades could be "concussion missiles", "sensor jammer" (preventing enemy locks?) and "rotating cannons".

Agrivar said:

I'm liking what I'm hearing.

Agrivar said:

For rotating cannons, I would assume that this wouldn't give a 180 degree firing arc, but instead would give them an equal firing arc both fore and aft. So they still can't fire port and starboard like the Ion Turret can.

That's a pretty exciting prospect.