The way you tend to use it, it certainly comes across that way.
It was meant to point out why some rules are unrealistic and ought not to be taken as gospel for any purpose over and above the one they were made for.
As an illustration, I believe there's a rule prohibiting running two different power plants simultaneously in a ship, right? You can have a second one as a beck-up, but you can only run one at a time. Thus precluding having one power plant that runs the computer and life support, another one that is turned on when the maneuver drive is to be used, and a third that is turned on when the weapons are needed. That one is pure wargame, and its purpose is to simplify game play. And that's fine as long as you want to keep things simple. But it's not realistic. Any ship captain would want to keep fuel consumption as low as possible and would not keep his power plant turned up full blast 24/7. So if someone wanted to go into greater detail on that subject and was willing to expend the extra time on it, he should be allowed to do it and not be told that the ship is, in fact, using its power plant full blast at all times because that's what the rules says.
Yes, that's what the rules says, but the rules are deliberately simplifying a complex situation for the sake of playability. Or in other words, the rules are
wrong. Which is fine as long as you don't delued yourself into believing the rules, all the rules, and nothing but the rules.
This is, in fact, one of the fundamental differences between a roleplaying game and wargames and boardgames: that the rules are not the sum total of reality.
They rules of the game *DEFINE* the universe of the game.
No, they don't. You're wrong about that, and that's proved every time a supplement is published that provide additional rules, since that shows that the previous rules were incomplete.
Not that any proof should be necessary. It's so blatantly obvious. It follows logically from the fact that there's a referee to provide rulings for everything the printed rules doesn't cover. If the printed rules defined the universe, there would be no need and no room for the referee. It would be like it is in Monopoly and Diplomacy, the rules are the rules. But in role-playing games the rules are the guidelines, no more.
THERE IS NO UNDERLYING SHARED REALITY.
That's your opinion, and it's just as good as my opinion. I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by telling me that again, though. After all, you know that I disagree and you're not provideng any new arguments to make me change my mind.
I know I probably can't change your mind either (though I'm puzzled as to why you ever mix and match rules sets; if you were truly consistent on this point you'd only ever use one set of rules for any one argument).
But then, I'm not trying to convince YOU. I'm trying to convince others who may read these discussions.
So I'l keep sticking to my opinion, thank you very much.
THERE IS TOO AN UNDERLYING SHARED REALITY, NYAH, NYAH!.
The quest for realism lead me to bad games and worse play.
It may lead you there. It leads me to greater verisimilitude and enhanced gaming experience.
The CT rules provide a stable, and while incredibly inefficient, easily worked set of numbers for ships.
They are easily worked. That's their virtue, and if you're satisfied with that, that's fine.
If you're interested in realism, though, not so much.
To use the LS requirements in MT, you'd need at least three of those 1/10 ton reactors, reactors which don't exist in MT. (In fact I don't know where you pulled them from, nor do I really care.)
They're from TD (one of their equipment sheets, if you remember those) and they are, indeed, MT.
In CT:
you need at least PP1. Using any TL HG PP2, you step it back to PP1, and you get 1Td/Mo/100TdOfShip - 2 Td/Mo. You don't want to use Bk2 PP for this... it burns 10Td/mo.
Why? Yes, I know the rules says so, but what's the rationale? Since you can have a PP1 for a 100T ship, 1T power plants are possible. Why can't you have a separate 1T power plant in a 200T ship? That would be a PP½.
