I often find myself wondering what enemies are included, for example, in the Leadership Element commendation (kill a Leader-class enemy during the Campaign).
I also never know what a Grunt Hero is or what an Elite Spec-Ops looks like.
Because of that, I think a guide on Covenant Ranks should be made and that's what I'll be working on in the next days.
Once again we think alike. I just mentioned this to Ark last week sometime. The strategy guide makes it very clear how many ranks of each enemy there are and what their names are, with photos of most of them. Where the guide fails is in its lack of explaining which "class" each rank falls into (e.g. infantry, leader, specialist, etc.)
For the sake of being factual (what we can prove), I suggest limiting this project to the enemies in Reach. I recommend using the rank names from the official strategy guide; then, systematically killing each rank of each enemy type in-game to see what class name it appears as in the post-game carnage report and the b.net game details.
The Halopedia tends to mix the lesser grades of canon (books, comics, etc) with the #1 beats-all-other sources of canon: the games themselves. (Canon priorities per Joe Staten.) It's also rife with spelling errors and usually fails to list its sources.
Undoubtedly, our guide will be superior in these regards.
We need standard nomenclature, as always. "Enemy Type" may be suitable for the highest category (Grunts, Brutes, Elites, etc.) "Rank" is definitely the official Bungie term to describe the next category level. For example, the seven ranks of Elites listed in the guide:
- Elite Minor (blue)
- Elite Officer (red)
- Elite Ultra (white)
- Elite Ranger (gray)
- Elite Spec Op (black)
- Elite General (gold)
- Elite Zealot (Story Character)
Those are the exact name from the guide, including what's in the parentheses. Interesting that the Zealots are not in Firefight. (And they're purple, of course, even though the guide didn't list that.)
Finally, I believe the last term we need to use is "class". This is the term used in commendations such as "Leadership Element", "SpecOps", and "Cannon Fodder".
I have attached a sample of a b.net game details page showing the enemy detail. Next to the image of each enemy, its "enemy type" is listed on the top and it's class on the bottom. For example, "Elite Infantry" is enemy type "Elite", class "Infantry". It does not list the rank. (the image seems to show the rank of "Elite Minor", based on the helmet's shape.) The "Elite Leader" in the report shows an image of an Elite Ultra and "Elite Specialist" shows an image of the Elite Ranger. This doesn't mean that if the class is listed as "Skirmisher Infantry" that the kill will count as infantry for the sake of Commendations, though! (See below.)
We will need to add the Golden Elite Ranger (BOB). In the b.net enemy detail, BOBs appear as enemy type "Elite Ranger" instead of just "Elite" like the others. Their class is "BOB". On Winter Contingency (D@N), the BOBs count as a leader class, not a specialist class (they count toward the Leadership Element commendation!!!) Also, even though the post-game carnage report lists enemies by class, the BOB appears as an "Elite Light Vehicle" instead of "BOB". I'm guessing that the b.net query logic simply translates "Elite Light Vehicle" into "BOB" for web surfers and this minor name change wasn't worth a game update.
While I was testing class types, I was surprised to find that the enemy class "Skirmisher Infantry" does not count toward the Cannon Fodder commendation; it counts as a specialist and increments the SpecOps commendation. So we will have to test EVERYTHING unless Bungie already has provided this mapping in a BWU or something.
Great idea, Pulse!
