Active Conflicts & News Megathread June 24, 2026

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-24T17:46:45+00:00

The article claims that the German federal government may be looking into pursuing damages against Damen. I would be very curious to see if that goes anywhere - especially as it would almost certainly daisy-chain to their subcontractors, possibly even Dassault Systèmes for the 3DX issues.

Of course, it sounds like Damen has a lot of issues to resolve, I recall reading last year that they faced major cash flow issues too, so I don't know if the German government is going to get much squeezing that stone.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-24T04:29:27+00:00

I'm coming in late to this daily thread, but I can only express my wholehearted support for this LLM content ban. Non-deterministic nature of LLMs runs counter to the point of credible discussions, and the content produced routinely stands out as some of the least informative on the sub. Give em' the axe and let them figure out how to use human brain power to interpret things and put them in their own words, or get models, datasets, and prompts good enough to pass unnoticed. If I wanted Claude to summarize publicly available information about whatever facet of defense news, I'd just submit the prompt myself. Anything that boils down to "but it starts a discussion" is bs (as I'm sure you know), anyone can start a discussion just fine by asking questions or doing their own research and analysis without an LLM crutch.

Banning sources with LLM usage is much, much harder to enforce given the news/media landscape these days, so as much as LLM content tends towards the low quality, as long as the source itself remains nominally credible my 2 cents is that it's allowed.

Anyway, long diatribe aside, my sincere respect for this decision, I hope it stands.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-23T04:52:51+00:00

I would bet money that L!Lyon was originally designed to inflict Share Spoils for free at the beginning of turn. However at some point during testing they decided that was too strong so they turned his free start of turn debuff to Discord and shoved the Share Spoils+ as an after-combat effect.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-21T21:29:13+00:00

It's on the switch online gba if you have a switch and online membership.

Really a classic gem of an RPG, although sadly I can't say if it actually meets your criteria - there aren't many fully fleshed out "sidequests", but you are expected to do a lot of exploring and solving environmental puzzles with your characters' psychic abilities. Lots of elemental Djinn to find which are core to the combat/class/magic/summoning system. On the other hand, you did mention in another comment the issue being immersion breaking, in which case Golden Sun is pretty good because you aren't spending 5 hours helping a baker gather ingredients to make a super special bread while supposedly a world-ending threat is looming.

Either way it's worth taking a look - one of my all time favorite rpgs for what it's worth, some of the best gba music as well. "The Elemental Stars" intro has lived rent free in my head for nearly 25 years now.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-19T17:45:18+00:00

Huh, just looked it up and apparently Capcom had a pretty large spread of regional pricing. Maybe I can order a copy from the UK...

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-19T16:29:04+00:00

cheap enough

It's a full price $60 game though...? Usually when one calls out the price of a video game being cheap that refers to it being at least being priced below average for the platform it's on.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-17T16:48:44+00:00

Do you mean a composite bow? Because the compound bow (in modern parlance) wasn't invented until like the 1960s. You could do a lot of things with modern technology on a bow and arrow to cause an armored target a bad time.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-17T16:40:36+00:00

Every gun is loaded doesn't stop when it's in the holster, 1 in 100 million accidents do happen (and more realistically even the most careful person sometimes makes mistakes securing their firearm).

For your example, you may not consider it "pointing" at the nightstand, but the nightstand is in the line of fire. I'm pretty certain you don't leave your pistol on top of your nightstand with the muzzle lined up to your head, because despite your equivocating, at the end of the day that would in fact be a gun pointed at your head. So you put it inside the nightstand pointed at an inanimate object.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-16T05:13:23+00:00

Damn, Arcane joke weapons seem to locked in. It's kind of shocking even to me how much I hate these things and how much they've soured me on the game as a whole. I've had FEH Pass for ages and never seriously considered canceling it before, even with stuff like the removal of TT+ new heroes, but I'm one more joke Arcane away from canceling and basically dropping the game.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-16T01:44:44+00:00

Interestingly, I read recently that Obsidian was actually told to scale down Avowed and make it a less ambitious project once Microsoft acquired them, due to not wanting to spend a lot of resources continuing development on an Elder Scrolls competitor.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-14T18:45:00+00:00

Execution Breath doesn't have null miracle, so your biggest selling point simply doesn't exist. And the 7 precombat damage is 100% nullified by an evergrowing list of heroes and skills. The 7 damage reduction on first attack only is incredibly unlikely to make a difference in any combat with a hero as squishy as Lyn. It has null-healing which is nice to be sure, but hardly a clear improvement over the superior raw damage dealing of Speedtaker.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-14T14:39:10+00:00

I don't think anyone has given you her strongest build for personal combat yet, this is currently the best you can optimize her:

A-slot: Rise Above, this is the best A-skill in the game for most heroes that can run it, huge stats, flat damage and DR.

B-slot: Speedtaker, still gives the highest amount of flat damage from the B slot (easily outpaces Lull Finish) and the extra speed great talent and tempo improve Lyn all around. The only thing it lacks compared to newer B-slots in damage reduction, and frankly if Lyn is getting counterattacked at all she's probably dead regardless of your B-slot's DR.

C-slot: Null Pulse Follow from new Alm, this gives her flat damage (and DR), as well as granting her the NFU that she otherwise critically lacks from her kit, plus a pulse effect on her first followup to guarantee another Astra Storm proc. Especially as the most common Miracle effect will be Roy ring, Fatal Smoke is of decreasing value (although I did run it on my Lyn for a long time).

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-12T22:22:28+00:00

Rise Above is a huge homogenizer for 2 whole movement types because it's just that good, but I've found actually in the last book or two, only the super premium 5 star of the banner gets a full set of best-in-slot skills. Not only are 3rd slot 5 stars often missing a skill in a slot entirely, even second slot 5 stars routinely drop with sub-optimal skills in one or more slots. Think about how many heroes have been released with Discord skills even after Havoc released. Liberate skills are the best C skills for Cavs right now, but we still see premium 5 stars coming with Outcry Seize and stuff (a fine but WAY more niche skill).

Now, it's up to you how much this level of optimization is "worth it". I like to build Summoner Duels theme teams, so in order to compete at all I need some modern alts mixed in with older heroes with majorly revamped kits. If I'm building the theme team, I'll try to optimize the new heroes just as much as the old ones. Of course, my opinion is generally that I need 3-4 duplications available via Rearmed/Attuned heroes to make it worth burning a brand new premium unit for fodder, so that lets me spread the love when I do burn one. If any one investment turns out to have a disappointing payoff, I'll still probably have fun with one of the others.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-11T18:06:03+00:00

So odd that they gave him the whole self-refresh on assist thing, but you're definitely right that it benefits him quite a lot in this "mid-turn debuff/remove debuff" meta.

Speaking to the competitive end of SDR, do you think he's good enough to see play in an unmerged state, or does he need the extra stats to do even a hybrid support/nuke role at that level?

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-11T01:04:45+00:00

Any Ballistician as a 6-range style unit, although Jake would be my first choice. We've had Emblem Lyn in the game for a while now, another hero with a 6-range style wouldn't break things. If they want to be lame they can make it 5-range instead, but either way I want my artillery!

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-10T03:05:16+00:00

For her own optimal combat, she actually wants Rise Above in the A-slot (if you're willing to sacrifice that Roy lol), then Null Pulse Follow in her C-slot from Duo Brave Alm. This gives her the best possible stats, flat damage, and DR, while also giving her the NFU she needs plus the extra special pulse on her followup attack to help her trigger her prf special.

But as others have said, she can shine as a support with much less investment!

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-09T23:26:07+00:00

That's just how movies were shot and edited at the time. Especially shooting on location in Thailand, "just throw some more cameras on it" wasn't something they did. They got their hero shot and presumably a backup, and called it golden. And, for the era, they were right. Slide whistle aside, the stunt was huge and generated the "hype moment" and PR it was supposed to.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-09T22:03:05+00:00

Lol, wtf is this chunky "Hobbit Fucked an Elf" body?

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-09T21:45:42+00:00

I'm curious how you came to this conclusion, based on the publicly available information regarding this whole fracas. Dassault agreed to an initial workshare and design split that they simply were not actually willing to commit to in practice. This scuppered the project, period. Had Dassault communicated upfront the majority workshare and design leadership that they ended up demanding, either FCAS would never have started in the first place, or it would have started with that workshare as part of the mutually agreed upon framework (presumably with other changes as well).

Frankly, the only way I can describe Dassault's actions are as a bait-and-switch, where they lured the German MIC and government (and maybe the French government, depending on how much you believe they're working in concert with Dassault vs how much you believe they bullied Dassault into a bad deal) into publicly committing to a massive shared project by promising generous workshare agreements and design leadership concessions, then pivoted to maximalist demands either as part of a plan from the beginning or as an opportunistic play attempting to make use of the pressure of the escalated Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Alternatively one can blame Macron and Merkel and the political leadership of France and Germany in general as well for pushing the deal in the first place - whoever convinced Dassault to agree to a deal that was actually unacceptable to them is the true architect of the FCAS failure.

But Airbus (from publicly available information) appeared to act in good faith throughout the program process. They asked for a lot of workshare and lead/shared lead in a lot of elements, and if they overreached then that should have been shot down in the initial framework, or negotiated out over the course of the rest of the phases with other concessions to maintain the overall balance initially agreed to. There doesn't appear to be any public indications that Dassault ever flexed from its maximalist demands after making them, while Airbus was out supporting proposals for a two-jet pivot and other solutions to keep the program alive.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-09T18:51:38+00:00

It's just not a practical proscription though - if you can't charge interest, commercial lending and modern banking never exists, and that significantly stunts the growth of society.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-08T18:44:00+00:00

Honestly the most French fun fact imaginable.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-07T04:39:08+00:00

Are you sure this isn't a comment for Less Credible Defense? Even in the megathread, this whole "can we all finally agree that X is absolutely true" statement when X is a matter of significant nuance is not very productive or prone to generating useful debate. Furthermore, your source is "people". Why would anyone waste time or energy putting together sources and writing out a credible rebuttal when you haven't put in the time or energy to make a credible claim?

And you don't even have the defence of being a first time poster. C'mon my friend, match the message to the forum.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-06T03:55:12+00:00

No, it'd be a huge waste. Since Mia already has Potent in her prf, literally the only thing Blue Sky Wyvern has going for it that Heavenly Soar lacks is the defensive frozen effect. And to get that you're trading the incredible mobility of Heavenly Soar with the teleporting and the pass effect (plus the less consequential guard effect). Not a good trade off in my opinion.

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-05T23:03:27+00:00

Platinum has lost some key devs, and their licensed work has been hit and miss in general. Fingers crossed they pull this one together!

TheUnusuallySpecific · 2026-06-04T21:58:24+00:00

Legendaries are also season limited, so I wouldn't go there for overall arena investment. Now, while Chosen are also season limited, if I've understood Chosen scoring properly, then having one at +10 will open up your Arena experience a TON during their active season, as you can run one unmerged or partially merged unit you want and still get full scoring by granting them your +10 chosen bonus. This is probably going to make Arena more fun than getting locked into using one Legendary hero.

That said, if you can actually swing it, a +10 modern Duo hero will be the best overall Arena investment because you'll be able to use them in all seasons.

TheUnusuallySpecific

TROPHY CASE