The Rebel Faction

Or do we pick and chose when it applies, in order to screw TNO?

Why not? It's reciprocation.

And no-one bothers to try and repudiate most of my points.

It was continious, unabated military build up that bankrupted the Soviet Union (as well as poor economic planning in general, granted, but many credit the nuclear arms race as the biggest contributor). And it is military spending that has so damaged North Korea's economy.

True. But do we forget the United States undoubtably spent the most money on its military than either Soviet Russia or North Korea? Moreover, the United States is more akin in philosophy and government than either of the other two countries mentioned. This is a case where I don't think there is a direct parallelism that can be made, at least from history.

I am not suggesting nor looking for a bean counting policy wherein we assign specific values to planets and need a supercomputer to decide the exact size of our armies. That would be foolish...

These are the times in which I wish we did have a supercomputer that could do all of that, simply because there could be no disagreement on strength and how time effects it.

Which suggests to me that the realism "rule" is just a word, which means nothing. The GC is allowed to operate unrealistically, and TNO is not allowed to operate realistically.
So, what's the deal? Are we actually going to make an effort to play with some sense of realism, or not? Or do we pick and chose when it applies, in order to screw TNO?

Things seem to me to pretty balanced in terms of being unrealistic as how they're being RPed right now, by both sides. TNO has its arguments about GC's economy. GC has its arguments about population assimilation and TNO wielding too many big ships. Right now, I'd say we're about even.

Not an applicable arguement, in that the US has never had it's home beaten asunder in multipe wars.

Because Soviet Russia and North Korea have?

And that is how it shall stay.

The only thing I'll say, is TNO has a preconceived notion that GC doesn't have very good quality soldiers, and their forces are pretty much bumbling idiots. So it would be a good strategy for me to encourage that notion to the best of my ability. My troops aren't as good as the Imperial forces, but they aren't retards.

It isn't very hard to act like an inept moron. So I think the strategy would be plausible.