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[Harmful Mechanic]

Maybe a little Irresponsible Modder™ insight will help here.

One thing I've been playing around with is hullmod/hullmod interactions that cause 'malfunctions', and something like that might be a good solution here.

EG, I have an engine-power bonus that can be stacked with Safety Overrides to produce truly ludicrous performance. I thought about just blocking SO... but it turns out that having the hullmod introduce engine malfunctions (% chance to flame out) when SO is installed alongside it is actually pretty interesting. You still get insane speed; you just don't get it reliably - but you still benefit from high potential speed, even if the advantage is less in practice. So it's not punitive; it's a choice you can make, with real upsides and downsides, and sometimes you might want to make that choice. Plus, I made the engines flicker and it looks really funny.

So something like increased chances of malfunctions at low CR, or edge-case interactions with other hullmods or particular weapons, might be a better thematic choice; push the 'impressive, but brittle' aspect of the Lion's Guard, by having the ships trade up-front performance and flashy starts for massive downsides in extended battles and bigger problems once things start going wrong.

[Helldiver]

The new SD lore reads like something out of a parody or a cartoon. Even the "IRL equivalents" aren't nearly this comical. It's beyond on the nose and clownish, I'm already dreading what's coming next for "faction lore".

[Antelope Syrup]

The argument around the diktat is ultimately an emotional one. People do/don’t like this new direction because they already did/didn’t like the Diktat for whatever reason. Though, having a set of themed variants that are just D skins is ultimately boring. The skins only serve a narrative purpose, and are perhaps very cleverly implemented and a maybe even a good piece of world building; From a gameplay perspective, you might’ve well just added nothing at all for Sindria. From a lore perspective, I understand all the reasons why, but I still irrationally cling to the idea of Andrada being Space Napoleon, rather than “El Presidente de Askoña”

[Big Bee]

As much as I'm not a fan of the changes (because the LG ships seem like just direct downgrades), people seem to really overreact to how much it affects the Diktat. Like, a few minor penalties (and a built-in mod that is only a downside for players, not the Diktat) doesn't really turn Andrada and co. into "cartoonishly incompetent clowns" or whatever. That seems like a big exaggeration.

I think the LG ships should have the Solar Shielding either be in all their loadouts by default but not built-in, or have slightly different mounts (like more energy/hybrid cause of Andrada favouring energy). That way, it's either just a harder to get reskin with 1 extra d-mod that you'll remove anyway, or somewhat different enough to be worth playing around with because of the different potential loadouts despite the built-in hullmod making it less flexible. I don't think that would mess with the lore/purpose that much but still be different enough to not be a direct downgrade in every way.

[Blue_Bear]

I've mentioned this elsewhere in the forums, but I think that the LG changes might add an opportunity for some interesting narrative changes focused on the fate of the Sindrian system.

Perhaps an event/quest chain where the players get a look into the depths of Sindrian society, and are provided a stark choice... Do they side with the status quo, as horrific as it is (and in doing so gain access to the Lion Guard's kit peacefully so long as they have a commission with the Diktat) or do they side with forces agitating for change, putting the Lion Guard's gear into the wild by passing some of it along to the rebels, which help give them an edge (as they're using different kinds of ships) but also risks this potentially dangerous tech getting out into the wild, destabilizing the broader sector.

In general, it would be cool to have some more narrative stories that play with emergent mechanics to cause unpredictable results, to take the same scenario further: By empowering the rebels you might actually cause the collapse of the Diktat, and thus the potential loss of one of the sector's best antimatter fuel providers, this is an opportunity for the player to exploit, but it could also start a sectorwide death spiral if the player doesn't intervene.

I feel like it would help to add a sense of huge consequences, while also giving us some more of that sweet sweet lore.

[Shinr]

A stupid (and work-intensive) idea came to me regarding the Diktat:

Instead of having worse re-colors of other factions' ships, the Lion Guard roster should be 100% comprised of distinct, unique ship designs exclusive to them.

The kicker is that all of these unique designs are statistically worse/worse in other ways compared to the ship designs they were meant to compete against or counter.

The point of this? It is not as obviously bad, and if Alex allows the LG ships to be traded outside the Diktat (how they got outside the Diktat? Corruption is one of possible answers) they could be a potential "Not what you want, but is the best you can currently get" type buy.

This idea is inspired by various presentation tricks gamedevs employ, for example the bonus exp mechanic in World of Warcraft: Players hated that you get Negative XP gain modifiers when you go too long without resting at Inns, so Blizzard "replaced" it with the functionally identical system where you get Bonus XP modifiers upon resting, and the players ate it up.

[Antelope Syrup]

The new SD lore reads like something out of a parody or a cartoon. Even the "IRL equivalents" aren't nearly this comical. It's beyond on the nose and clownish, I'm already dreading what's coming next for "faction lore".

Really? You think the Diktat described is more "comical" and "clownish" than, say, the historical regime that brought us the Maus and Ratte, and whose leadership staff were afraid to wake up their leader during the early hours of D-Day?

Who cares about the historical basis? Going off that logic the Hegemony should have all of these issues, even more so. The real issue is that the Lion's guard is the only unique aspect of the Diktat, yet they have no unique aspect to them gameplay-wise, except of course, farming them for their weapons.

[Histidine]

So I deleted my post immediately after I posted it for reasons, but since it's still 'out in the wild' anyway:

The new SD lore reads like something out of a parody or a cartoon. Even the "IRL equivalents" aren't nearly this comical. It's beyond on the nose and clownish, I'm already dreading what's coming next for "faction lore".

Really? You think the Diktat described is more "comical" and "clownish" than, say, the historical regime that brought us the Maus and Ratte, and whose leadership staff were afraid to wake up their leader during the early hours of D-Day?

Who cares about the historical basis? Going off that logic the Hegemony should have all of these issues, even more so. The real issue is that the Lion's guard is the only unique aspect of the Diktat, yet they have no unique aspect to them gameplay-wise, except of course, farming them for their weapons.

First let's get a couple of things out of the way:
- I feel like this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between the Hegemony and the Diktat. The short form: one is a bureaucratic military establishment and the other is (I use the term quite specifically) a cult of personality. Those are pretty different beasts!
- The discussion might or might not be more relevant without all this talk about history, but for my post I specifically brought the topic up because the post I was quoting did.

But to focus on 'the real issue' as you put it: I'm not entirely sure what work the words 'unique [gameplay] aspect' is supposed to do here. The fact that the LG subfaction exists at all is already a mechanic used nowhere else in the game. More broadly, Diktat already has more gameplay reasons to interact with their stuff than Church or League, even though the latter is several times larger (this will change with the DEMs and Pegasus, but LG is also getting new weapons and a new not-a-Pegasus).

Could the LGs get more stuff to stand out (not just from other factions, but the mainstream Diktat)? Absolutely! Some possibilities below:
- I'll take this moment to say that the Kinetic Blaster and Gigacannon probably shouldn't be Executor-exclusive, so they become more of a defining thing for the subfaction (rather than the ship).
- I vaguely remember a time (possibly even 0.95.1a, although the .faction files don't seem to bear this out) when LG used high tech ships while the commoners had midline stuff, which was a good way to signal which one was considered the elite (without actually making them so). LG getting high-tech stuff again, with or without new skins, would bring this back.
- Seconding an idea that's been posted before: Spawn LG fleets with S-mods, recoverable or not.
- A completely unique ship or two.

[Megas]

- I vaguely remember a time (possibly even 0.95.1a, although the .faction files don't seem to bear this out) when LG used high tech ships while the commoners had midline stuff, which was a good way to signal which one was considered the elite (without actually making them so). LG getting high-tech stuff again, with or without new skins, would bring this back.

I remember Lion's Guard using high-tech ships in previous releases too.

[tomatopaste]

Case for replacing FMR on the Executor with Accelerated Ammo Feeder:
-missile battleship
-loses two missiles for large energies
-diktat engineers give it AAF to buff its ballistic capabilities
peak performance
the ultimate generalist battleship
does not rely on any weapon loadout gimmick
is infinitely versatile
phillip andrada is a genius and a visionary

[Orange Juice Goose]

the ultimate generalist battleship

someone give this man a raise

[Dread Pirate Robots]

I like that a lot, it's strong (5 mediums with AAF is nothing to laugh at) but also makes it feel like whoever designed it is a bit of a moron in exactly the "our ships will be the best at everything!" way that I think Alex is going for.

[Drazan]

Case for replacing FMR on the Executor with Accelerated Ammo Feeder:
-missile battleship
-loses two missiles for large energies
-diktat engineers give it AAF to buff its ballistic capabilities
peak performance
the ultimate generalist battleship
does not rely on any weapon loadout gimmick
is infinitely versatile
phillip andrada is a genius and a visionary

Peak performance indeed, awsome idea. Hope our gods listen to us.

[SafariJohn]

That would be fun

[Delta_of_Isaire]

HEF may be better than AAF for Executor. Slightly less powerful than AAF, meshes well with Gigacannon et al (on paper at least), and fewer ships have it so it deserves some love.

Either way, a damage boosting system may well be the extra push Executor needs to cement it as a solid alternative to Pegasus (in player hands at least). It's not that FMR is bad with 2 large missiles, but compared to Pegasus with 4 it is guaranteed to feel underwhelming.