Honestly, this argument is silly. Weather or not you support this design decision boils down almost entirely to weather or not you liked the orange cartoon fascists or the purple cartoon fascists for whatever reason. This is for the most part, emotional. Does it really matter that Lions gaurd ships have a small debuf? Not really. But people, (myself included) lose their crap over it because it feels like a betrayal of the Diktats previous characterization.
I’ve found mostly, the people whom support the change were the people who already didn’t like diktat for whatever personal reason.
The discussion has been so focused on this because the entire Sindrian part of the blogpost was about the Lion’s guard; And we had already seen twitter posts about the Pegasus and DEMs. In the way of remnants, we got a few paragraphs and a gif, not much to go on.
Ultimately, most players don’t like this decision because it undeniably has a underwhelming or negative impact on gameplay. Starsector historically speaking at the very least, wasn’t a story driven game, and still isn’t for the most part; And while the world building, lore, and storytelling are exquisite, they are still secondary to the actual gameplay. A vast majority people play starsector for the experience of playing starsector, therefore the gameplay takes precedence. When people see the new, very cool, ship variants they want it to have an interesting impact on gameplay. D-skins are not interesting in the slightest.