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Author Topic: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2  (Read 37945 times)

Hiruma Kai

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #90 on: April 30, 2022, 07:39:09 PM »

- Sindria developed Solar Shielding.
- Sindria (with TT help) developed Kinetic Blaster and G I G A C A N N O N.
- Sindria-exclusive ships are straight worse than base.
- Luddic Path ships get SO for free when nobody else can.

One of these things doesn't hold up.

(You're right, #4 is factually incorrect :D As to the implied contradiction between these items, I honestly just don't buy it; imo you don't even have to try hard to have it all make sense in-fiction.)
No, it's correct. LP ships have built-in SO, which can't be built-in anymore. It also doesn't take up a story point built-in slot. You can find their blueprints and build them yourself, and after restoration they're straight up better at being SO ships than the same hull in non-LP form. Religious nutters who hate technology have better engineers than a dictator who fetishizes high technology. Lions Guard ships have been designed with no redeeming qualities compared to the base hull, whereas LP ships have an obvious and very large redeeming quality.

A fair complaint might be that the player can do stuff the Sindarian Diktat can't, but I don't think the comparison to Luddic Path engineers is right in your example.  As mentioned by CoveredInBees, it's the player's restoration that allows SO to be retained on the ships without a downside.  So the player is a genius engineer, or they hired one, not the Luddic Path engineers that are amazing.  Even the player's faction isn't that good, as every LP ship they build still has ill-advised modifications.  Only the player's personal fleet can have them.  And in general, I consider Ill-advised modification to be such a downside, I'd never seriously use a ship with it in my fleet.

If we're concerned about game balance, it gets a shrug from me.  Luddic Path ships with built in SO include the Brawler, Cerberus, Gremlin, Hound, Kit and Lasher.  All frigates, and most of them simply not that impressive in a combat context (SO Hound is out of combat amazing in a pacifist play through).  I don't see typical end game fleets packed with Brawlers and Lashers for example, compared to frigates like Hyperions, Scarabs, and Omens.  And the others are just civilian ships that get bumped up to the "I might consider them in combat" tier after restoration.

Where as ships like the Hammerhead, and sounds like Sunder, don't necessarily need a stronger skin version to make them threatening.  Eagle and Falcon perhaps might, but mostly from an offensive perspective - defensively they're fine, but you can't really get their front ballistics and mid-energy to work very well together into a strong DPS setup.  And they've already got XIVth Battlegroup skins anyways. It'll be interesting to see if the new medium energy weapons help those mid-line cruisers.

Point being: If there were say a hullmod that could only be installed on Lion's Guard ships that flips their uniqueness from negative to positive(Say gives them a smattering of tiny little buffs roughly equivalent to what could otherwise be achieved with the OP cost of Solar Shielding) justified by the ingenuity of the standard Diktat grunt having to deal with egotistical inefficiencies forced upon them, given as a quest reward then the players could perhaps have their cake and eat it too.

Hmm, it's an interesting idea. Feels like a lot of work - as you say - without too much reason for it, though. Like, if we really, really wanted to make the LG ships "not a downgrade" there's probably simpler ways - and I probably wouldn't want to go down the route of enabling that through some kind of *Diktat* mission line... hmm.

Simplest change to make it not a straight downgrade would be to change Solar Shielding from built in at cost, to simply applied to every auto-build and variant the Lion Guard uses, and set OP back to standard.  So after a restore, you've got a baseline ship with a cool paint job.  Which may not be the way you want to go, but it certainly strikes me as the simplest from a coding perspective.  It's also consistent with the baseline Diktat fleet presumably fielding standard versions of the ships which don't have the downsides.

Actually, thinking about it further, if special modifications is mostly cosmetic, it would technically make LG ships buffed with the Derelict Operations skill, and neutral otherwise when restored, as compared to baseline ships. 

Although even that much probably doesn't help with players perceptions which have been built up over the years of thinking of the Lion's Guard as elite, instead of a parade and ego-boosting force.
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Hammerheadcruiser

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #91 on: April 30, 2022, 07:41:16 PM »

Re: battlecruiser carrier, I mean, that *is* the Odyssey, no? I guess there's maybe some design room for a larger fast carrier, but I think the more fighter wings they have the less interesting they get. Though the Legion shows you can have 4 wings and have the base ship have enough firepower to be interesting-enough, hmm. Worth thinking about!
The Odyssey's 2 hangars feels more like it can escort itself rather then being an actual carrier.

I really like the Legion, enough hangars to launch scary bombing runs and enough guns to keep you engaged. It's just painfully slow. If I was going from a Mora to a Legion it wouldn't be so bad, but from a Heron to the only real battlecarrier with a third of it's speed it hurts. A midline fast battlecarrier would be a fantastic alternative. Give it 4 hangars, solid PD, some guns, a missile slot or two, medium armour and say 60-70 speed (Heron being 3 hangars, 6 small energy, 1 medium and 80 speed) and your golden.
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Concrete

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #92 on: April 30, 2022, 07:49:42 PM »

(There has got to be a mod that's taken a claw at this already, right? Right?)
There's the Gonodactylus militarized mining ship from Blackrock that is very lobster(not quite there but firmly crustacean), but it isn't bright blue and capital ship sized. Both fatal failings of the design. That's the closest one I'm aware of.

Quote
Hmm, it's an interesting idea. Feels like a lot of work - as you say - without too much reason for it, though. Like, if we really, really wanted to make the LG ships "not a downgrade" there's probably simpler ways - and I probably wouldn't want to go down the route of enabling that through some kind of *Diktat* mission line... hmm.
Yeah it's certainly not important. Like I said before I think most of the discomfort with LG ships being equal to or slightly worse than default ships(depending on how much one values Solar Shielding) stems from expectations built up out of a modded experience of the game. And the easiest solution to that is downloading the mod that will likely appear a day after or perhaps the same day as the patch, refunding the OP cost of Solar Shielding to the ships and leaving everyone interested with the de facto mod LG experience almost 1:1; with the remaining trade off of having to remove a D-Mod in exchange for prettier looking ships being a fair one.
I liked the stated distinction between LG and non-LG Diktat fleets and think that there might be found fertile soil for a function vs form method/reward choice in a hypothetical Diktat narrative quest. Then my brain ran away with combining it with a "solution" to the "problem" that some were espousing.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #93 on: April 30, 2022, 07:55:04 PM »

Is anyone here actually asking for Lion's Guard ships to be better than the baseline? I've seen people asking for Solar Shielding to be free.

This idea that people want LG to be "elite" because they've been described that way in the past seems like a strawman to me.
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Concrete

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #94 on: April 30, 2022, 08:08:25 PM »

Why is the Dictat being so brushed off like it's run by a complete fool?

Andrada isn't presented to lack strengths in his leadership. All this does is communicate ignorance in ship design and the lack of a contradicting force in the decision-making policies of the faction.
There are many possible points to be made with this:
Age could have blunted a previously greater man.
It could be a commentary on Hegemony teachings leaving a high-ranking individual unprepared for managing a military without large amounts of existing material and pre-established doctrine.
It could also be commentary on the sycophants that dictatorships inevitably yield, if a cult of personality markets oneself for so long without alteration than the object of the cult will probably inevitably buy into some of the hype and consider themselves less likely to make mistakes and nobody is going to be willing to contradict them.

Having the Diktat fill the role of some sort of remarkably professional military force sorta just makes it the Hegemony Jnr. And while those are Andrada's origins I think it's reasonable to have more distinction between the two, with the Hegemony more militarily competent(or at least, practical). But with the history of the Sector more or less following the course of Hegemony's political control slipping more and more then provides contrast to a successful military man finding his true calling to be a political figure while his military expertise(be it previously overblown or legitimate) slipping as he obsesses over things he previously had no role in managing.

As much as the player's impact on the sector is primarily defined by raw military prowess, a character's successes being based more on bluster and charismatic manipulation of others at the cost of very slightly less efficient ships is still a very successful character even if the player doesn't engage with those systems as much as combat itself.
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DaShiv

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #95 on: April 30, 2022, 08:10:38 PM »

Hmm - I think the Scintilla is common enough that it's not really a concern. I don't think sticking an extra bay on the Apex would be a good idea - mixing fighters like that would be messy, and the ship really isn't about that, anyway.

Carriers with mixed built-in and modular fighter bays exist in the modiverse, but I can understand the rationale for keeping it out of vanilla.

I will add though that in my experience, the Scintilla is currently the rarest of the Remnant ships - it's quite common to run into big full-strength Ordos (max strength high danger) without any Scintillas at all. For example, looking at the largest 7 Ordos in a high danger system in my current run, here are their fleet compositions:

Ordos Data
Total_DPRadiantBrilliantScintillaFulgentGlimmerLumen
438370436
533480562
480450656
470346754
322370436
372480562
360450656
[close]

I don't know whether it's an artifact of fleet generation for large, cap/cruiser heavy fleets for Remnants or some other weighing (or just plain bad luck/seed), but for me currently it's much easier to find even Radiants than Scintillas once Ordos size become large enough. Perhaps caps/cruisers are displacing them from their proper spawn rate, especially if Brilliants also count as carriers (as Apex would in the future).

In any case, if Scintillas are to become the only source of Remnant LPC's then they should be guaranteed spawns in a large Ordos like the other ships currently appear to be.
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Voyager I

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #96 on: April 30, 2022, 08:23:48 PM »

I'm partial to the half-price Solar Shielding myself. It keeps the skin from being a straight upgrade since that's still OP you don't have the choice to not spend, but it gives them a neat little unique perk if you go through the trouble of acquiring one and then the expense of restoring away the less advisable alterations. It also makes thematic sense that Solar Shielding can be integrated more effectively when it's incorporated as a fundamental part of the ship by the creators of the technology, rather than installed after-the-fact by a third party. It's not a tremendous change either way, and I guess restored LG ships already have a tiny upside for an builds that do want Solar Shielding since they get it without spending a logistics slot, though I struggle to imagine that coming up as a limiting factor terribly often.

I am coming around a bit on the idea of the Lion's Guard as being primarily a parade army. The regular military has the duty of protecting the Sindrian Diktat from external threats. The Lion's Guard are responsible for protecting Philip Andrada from the regular military. That said, assuming Andrada and the Guards themselves buy into the hype of being the supreme executor's handpicked elite force, I'd bet they're one real conflict away from catastrophic defeats after being dropped unsupported onto Hostomel Airport sent to deliver a decapitation blow against Chicomoztoc .


EDIT: and for everything I've said, turning them into the KSA is still way better than accidentally making your fascists into cool badasses.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2022, 08:29:23 PM by Voyager I »
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #97 on: April 30, 2022, 08:41:42 PM »

Yeah it's certainly not important. Like I said before I think most of the discomfort with LG ships being equal to or slightly worse than default ships(depending on how much one values Solar Shielding) stems from expectations built up out of a modded experience of the game. And the easiest solution to that is downloading the mod that will likely appear a day after or perhaps the same day as the patch, refunding the OP cost of Solar Shielding to the ships and leaving everyone interested with the de facto mod LG experience almost 1:1; with the remaining trade off of having to remove a D-Mod in exchange for prettier looking ships being a fair one.
The expectation for the LG to be elite comes from their doctrinal statline in the current version of the game, which is 5 officer quality, 5 ship quality, 1 size; 4 more points than the player and most other factions get to spend. Most players won't go digging through the faction files to find those numbers, but they'll definitely notice that the LG is a stronger opponent than most other factions. If that's changing, and the LG is now a pushover, fine; but the impression that they are strong is built on the fact that in the currently released version of the game, they are strong.
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Alex

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #98 on: April 30, 2022, 08:56:30 PM »

Is this Word-of-God confirmation that Andrada was responsible for Opis's destruction? I mean it was probably obvious given that rebels probably don't have access to a planet-cracker.

... oops?

But, actually - David is the arbiter of what's "true" here; I was just going by memory and forgot there was an ambiguity here. I think what happened was, way back, I'd decided that this was the most likely interpretation of events, and them promptly forgot that this wasn't actually definitive.



Simplest change to make it not a straight downgrade would be to change Solar Shielding from built in at cost, to simply applied to every auto-build and variant the Lion Guard uses, and set OP back to standard.  So after a restore, you've got a baseline ship with a cool paint job.  Which may not be the way you want to go, but it certainly strikes me as the simplest from a coding perspective.  It's also consistent with the baseline Diktat fleet presumably fielding standard versions of the ships which don't have the downsides.

Oh! Hmm. I'm actually liking this a lot, at least at first glance - will think this over; soild chance it'll happen. For some reason the middle ground of "neither better nor worse after restoration" hadn't occurred to me :D Glad you brought this up, thank you! (And, yeah, that'd be super simple to do, too.)



The Odyssey's 2 hangars feels more like it can escort itself rather then being an actual carrier.

I really like the Legion, enough hangars to launch scary bombing runs and enough guns to keep you engaged. It's just painfully slow. If I was going from a Mora to a Legion it wouldn't be so bad, but from a Heron to the only real battlecarrier with a third of it's speed it hurts. A midline fast battlecarrier would be a fantastic alternative. Give it 4 hangars, solid PD, some guns, a missile slot or two, medium armour and say 60-70 speed (Heron being 3 hangars, 6 small energy, 1 medium and 80 speed) and your golden.

Yep, I gotcha! Will keep that in mind for sure.


There's the Gonodactylus militarized mining ship from Blackrock that is very lobster(not quite there but firmly crustacean), but it isn't bright blue and capital ship sized. Both fatal failings of the design. That's the closest one I'm aware of.

Fatal failings indeed :)

I will add though that in my experience, the Scintilla is currently the rarest of the Remnant ships - it's quite common to run into big full-strength Ordos (max strength high danger) without any Scintillas at all. For example, looking at the largest 7 Ordos in a high danger system in my current run, here are their fleet compositions:

Hmm, weird - some quick poking around just now, I'm not seeing that, so I'm tempted to say it's just luck - no-Scintilla fleets are certainly possible, but also not predominant, and plenty appear to have a bunch of them. I was specifically looking at higher-end Remnant bounty Ordos.


I'm partial to the half-price Solar Shielding myself. It keeps the skin from being a straight upgrade since that's still OP you don't have the choice to not spend, but it gives them a neat little unique perk if you go through the trouble of acquiring one and then the expense of restoring away the less advisable alterations. It also makes thematic sense that Solar Shielding can be integrated more effectively when it's incorporated as a fundamental part of the ship by the creators of the technology, rather than installed after-the-fact by a third party. It's not a tremendous change either way, and I guess restored LG ships already have a tiny upside for an builds that do want Solar Shielding since they get it without spending a logistics slot, though I struggle to imagine that coming up as a limiting factor terribly often.

I hear what you're saying, yeah. I think I'd rather - at most - make it "equal to base hull after a restoration". Otherwise, even if it's a minor edge, we get into potential "the base hull is bad" territory and I want to completely avoid that. It's ok with Pather ships because it's all small fry and SO is a style-changer so it's not quite a straight upgrade. It'd be less ok for a whole swath of midline ships up to cruiser-size. And, yeah, I get that with half-price solar shielding there'd be some question as to whether it's an upgrade, but I'd just as soon avoid it even being a question.

EDIT: and for everything I've said, turning them into the KSA is still way better than accidentally making your fascists into cool badasses.

Hah, yes, that too.
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Orange Juice Goose

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #99 on: April 30, 2022, 09:08:40 PM »

One thing I'd like is the ability to set faction doctrine to completely exclude a type of ship like the LG.
IE if I don't want my faction to use phase ships, but right now i am forced to keep at least one pip into phase ships, so even with none unlocked in doctrine i see my captains bringing out gremlins now and then despite otherwise having many many better choices to fly
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Voyager I

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #100 on: April 30, 2022, 09:27:45 PM »

I hear what you're saying, yeah. I think I'd rather - at most - make it "equal to base hull after a restoration". Otherwise, even if it's a minor edge, we get into potential "the base hull is bad" territory and I want to completely avoid that. It's ok with Pather ships because it's all small fry and SO is a style-changer so it's not quite a straight upgrade. It'd be less ok for a whole swath of midline ships up to cruiser-size. And, yeah, I get that with half-price solar shielding there'd be some question as to whether it's an upgrade, but I'd just as soon avoid it even being a question.

How much of a concern do you think that will be? XIV Lowtech ships are substantial upgrades over the base models on some of the most prevalent line ships in the game, but people are still perfectly happy using a baseline Onslaught if that's what they can get their hands on. For comparison, half-price Solar Shielding is a fairly minor 7-8 point rebate on a capital, roughly in line with the value of just the flux from the XIV bonuses, and with "special modifications" almost certainly leaves the hulls worse off than baseline until they're restored. I don't see that being the kind of bonus that people are going to feel pressured to pursue. Even if the player has reached the point in the game where they have unlimited resources to pour into inane gameplay loops crafting their ideal Dorito Fleet, farming and restoring an Eagle that saves 5 points on Solar Shielding is probably not what's on their mind.

Though to be honest, having crunched the numbers I've mostly just talked myself out of having any strong opinion just because the difference is so small either way.
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braciszek

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #101 on: April 30, 2022, 09:37:25 PM »

Beautiful new ships and weapons, making the factions less samey when you go and beat them up for whatever reason is most convenient for the player.

I'm also very happy for new remnant content (I did ask for possible new ships to add some variety to remnant farming some time ago, after all). I only have one very minor disappointment, and that is that the Nova very much resembles a hightech Retribution; both battlecruisers with similar weapon layouts and ship systems. In the modiverse, there are sometimes attempts to make "X lowtech/midline/hightech ship but another tech", and the relationship between these two ships kind of give off those vibes when IMO every other ship in SS has been succinctly distinct from the rest. This does not mean that I don't like either ship or that they are bad by any metric, but it is just an observation.

Regarding the Diktat, players are more likely going to respond more positively to something that is somewhat different rather than to something that is just given worse attributes with practically nothing interesting added to make up for it. As you mentioned, you can restore the dmod out, but the LG skins are probably going to be the least interesting ships for the player to obtain in the presence of more common and frankly superior standard versions. You lose your OP to Solar Shielding and you get a nice paint job. That's the new toy the player gets. At least the Executor gets a slight mount change to allow players to have something that fights a little differently than the Pegasus (possibly tach lance and HIL combos with medium kinetics). You're adding more to the narrative, sure, but it isn't giving that much of anything to the player, frankly speaking. Addendum: reading the new posts while I was writing this to simply make the LG in the hands of the player just midline with a different skin is at least the minimum appeal a skin can achieve, but it is still unfortunately a bit boring. Could be nice if the whole line of LG had some minor mount changes (like the executor; in terms of its own uniqueness compared to the other skins, it will be the only ship to be allowed to have the Diktat superweapons, after all) to spice things up...
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SafariJohn

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #102 on: April 30, 2022, 09:44:17 PM »

I'm also very happy for new remnant content (I did ask for possible new ships to add some variety to remnant farming some time ago, after all). I only have one very minor disappointment, and that is that the Nova very much resembles a hightech Retribution; both battlecruisers with similar weapon layouts and ship systems. In the modiverse, there are sometimes attempts to make "X lowtech/midline/hightech ship but another tech", and the relationship between these two ships kind of give off those vibes when IMO every other ship in SS has been succinctly distinct from the rest. This does not mean that I don't like either ship or that they are bad by any metric, but it is just an observation.

I kind of thought it was literally a Remnant conversion of the Retribution at first. I think it's the blast plate.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #103 on: April 30, 2022, 10:29:16 PM »

Is the Brilliant getting its sprite changed to reflect it losing its deck? Are the weapon ports getting shuffled?
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #104 on: April 30, 2022, 10:38:03 PM »

Fair! (Well, not "useless", and not always strictly worse - if you remove the d-mod and your build would have had Solar Shielding anyway, then they're up to par. But that aside...)
Well, there is still a monetary downside of restoring in that case, so I think strictly worse is fair: no matter what you do, you are worse off in some way than if you used the normal hull.

I guess if it is coded as a normal d-mod so that it reduces recovery cost and interacts with all the d-mod skills, then I would agree it's not strictly worse. I'm actually curious if hull restoration would remove the special modifications?

Also, I think it would be a bit more palatable for me if the hull mod didn't increase crew casualties (or slightly reduced them) even if it has other downsides. To me (as an engineer), engineers implementing something that they know has the opposite of the desired effect paints the engineers as incompetent, which doesn't seem to be the intent.

This actually reminds me of the whole 737 max debacle that Boeing had:
Spoiler
Basically, what happened was Boeing wanted a more fuel efficient plane so they had the engineers modify a normal 737 with new engines that were more fuel efficient (and well designed). The business/management people also cheaped out and reduced the number of sensors, removing some redundancy that the engineers would want for safety. That wouldn't have been such a catastrophic issue, except the customers (airlines) also wanted the planes to fly like older models of the 737 in terms of how the controls felt to the pilot (so that the pilots wouldn't need new training). The new engine layout changed how the plane flew, so the engineers devised some complicated computer system that made everything feel the same to the pilot (again the system was well designed), but the airlines cheaped out and didn't actually train the pilots about the new systems since they felt the same to fly.

The disastrous crashes happened because the decision to not include redundant sensors meant that when a sensor inevitably failed, bad data was sent to the complicated control system resulting in the plane flying in an unintended way, and the pilots weren't trained on what to do in that situation so the plane crashed. The crashes were ultimately the consequence of a bunch of uniformed decisions and design constraints from management and customers who didn't understand the technical implications of what they were asking for.

Technically, even with the design flaws, the crashes were avoidable if the pilots knew what to do (turn off the control system that was working incorrectly), so it wasn't really engineering incompetence, but just bad decisions from the upper management and customers. The engineers working on each individual part of that design did their best to fulfill all the constraints that were given to them and managed to do that reasonably well.
[close]

Drawing a parallel to the diktat, I would expect the engineers to actually fulfill the requested constraints and features: cover the exposed conduits and improve crew safety, or at least not harm it. Then maybe there are some side effects of that which they ignore/accept since it is more important to meet the demands of Andrada than make the best modifications, but they should at least meet those demands. I imagine Andrada would be pretty *** if he found out the design the engineers made for him did the opposite of what he asked for. It seems much more plausible that the engineers make a design that did what he asked for with some unintended side effects that get swept under the rug.
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