The "it's supposed to be fun" argument is a no-brainer, but also fairly meaningless IMO. Of course it's supposed to be fun to play, but to be honest I think an RPG can only go so far to encourage that - a lot of that is down to the group sitting down around the table. And "fun" is a highly subjective term anyway - a lot of CT fans enjoyed making characters or ships or planets for their own sake as a way to pass the rainy days (and incidentally, I think that MGT should retain that "solo play" aspect - I don't see why the game has to be focussed solely on round-the-table group play). Others didn't enjoy that so much and got their fun out of playing the game with other people. Neither side is right or wrong, and neither side has the right to say that their "fun" is more valid than anyone else's. So "fun" isn't really a good way to constrain game design because it's so subjective - "simplicity" and "ease of use" are a lot more objective.
Ultimately, what I want to see and what I'm arguing for is as few holes as possible in the design systems (be they ship, character, or star/planet). Whether one knows about the subject enough to spot them or care about them isn't really the issue - the fact is, the hole is still there. The way I see it, there's three things at play here - realism, internal consistency, and sensibility - and all three are important. One could argue that consistency and sensibility are more important than realism, but I think they're more inter-related than people give them credit for. Magic may be unrealistic, internally consistent and sensible (following some kind of logic) but we're talking about a Scifi game here, and Traveller has traditionally always had a "veneer of realism" (as Aramis put it). I think that sense of realism is an essential part of the game (even if in practice it was poorly executed by the designers) - we wouldn't have had books like Scouts, or FF&S or the World Builders Handbook or the more realistic GURPS Traveller books like First In and Far Trader otherwise.
Taking Regina as an example - it's a habitable world around a gas giant. OK, so that means that it has to be tidelocked to the gas giant (like any moon is around a gas giant). That means its effective day length (relative to the sun) is very long (about 1.5 months long in fact) since it's orbiting at 55 radii. That means it's not actually all that habitable after all. So it's wrong to portray it an earthlike habitable world because it can't be if you follow the logic - it's neither realistic nor does it make sense. So it's a problem.
White dwarfs are another example. Traveller generates loads of Close white dwarf companions in binary systems and yet has habitable worlds close to the primary star. But if you have a white dwarf companion in a "Close" orbit, that means that it was once a red giant star that spiralled in toward the primary. There'd be mass exchange, streamers of material thrown everywhere, a lot more heat, and planets would be demolished, roasted, or ejected from the system for that to be the case. There's no way in hell you'd get an earthlike, habitable world sitting in orbit 3 around the primary star after that. (And not only does Regina have this situation but even worse, Guaran (the Hiver homeworld) has it as well - so really the Hivers shouldn't even exist as their system is described). Again, it's neither realistic nor sensible. Again, it's another problem, and a very widespread one.
It's that sort of thing that I want to get rid of in Traveller. These are bugs of the game's stargen rules, not features - they are results that don't make sense and aren't realistic either. The "Ancients did it" excuse only works so many times before you start wondering why the entire universe is full of wacky exceptions and very little is actually as it should be. There may be some degree of internal consistency (which alone means nothing, since the system can be internally consistent while being completely broken), but without realism (closeness to reality) and sensibility ("does it work logically?") to temper it then it's not really a useful system. And I really don't think anyone wants something that can be torn apart logically or runs contrary to what we're familiar with because that would distract from the gameplay with all the awkward questions that result from it.
And that's it, that's all I'm arguing for. I want a game that is as realistic, internally consistent and sensible as possible while also being as simple as possible and straightforward to play (which hopefully will make the game "fun").
I don't want Traveller to be "dumbed down" or over-abstracted or turned into something it's not - if you want a pure gonzo space opera setting then that's not Traveller and it never has been, and I think it's wrong to try to push Traveller in that direction - that's not being "true to Traveller's milieu". I don't think (and have never argued) that people are wrong to want games to be enjoyable, or that they're wrong to not care about realism... I just think it's wrong to over-simplify or reduce or remove the realism in Traveller. Sure, it may have space opera elements but they're tempered by the gritty feel of the setting and the detail level of the design systems it's had, and I think that should be preserved. If you want an "anything goes, throw realism out of the window" setting then you'd be better served by playing another game that has that kind of feel, like Star Wars or Fading Suns or something.
