Here's the OOC reason a corporation capable of constructing a capital ship can't field it: It's unbalanced and it's atrociously unfair to corporations in smaller factions. Let's assume, for instance, that Nepleslia has twenty or so industrialized star systems. That right there is three
hundred warships available to a Nepleslian corporation - twice the amount a single-system faction like USO has at its disposal - and now you're saying that Nepleslian corporation should have another two
hundred capital ships?
That's just a bit too much like a "personal empire," in my opinion - and it's because of this that I intend for the ban on corporate capital ships to remain, as it maintains
some semblance of balance between the forces of smaller factions and megacorporations.
Might this rule apply OOC limits on a story? Perhaps yes, perhaps no - but that brings me to my next point.
Here's the OOC reason a corporation capable of constructing a capital ship can't field it: there's no IC reason a corporation would need to do so in the first place - not when a corporation's safety is almost always guaranteed by the military forces of its host nation. A corporation like Google, for example, has no need to maintain its own private military - why bother when it can call upon the United States of America's armed forces - so why would a corporation in SARP need to maintain one?
Lastly, Rizzo, how is limiting the forces of corporations in the same fashion that factions have been limited for at
least the
past nine years constitute a problem with the desire to not have SARP become a tabletop RPG?" I, in all of my years here, have never once seen the MBL actually get in the way of telling a story nor have I ever seen its rigidity inhibit stories.
EDIT: No, Rizzo didn't double-post - I posted this in response to
this, took it down to remove the unnecessary (and kind of passive-aggressive, now that I think about it) quotations - then saw that Rizzo had
made another post.
Anyhoo, I don't want to change the MBL now - I just want to expand its "jurisdiction" slightly to include corporations in addition to factions.