It's not about me trying to dictate what you can and cannot do with your civilization, but it's more about preventing newcomers or existing players from feeling as though they need to have X fictional technology to have a chance at being relevant in the setting (or if they need to resist attacks from players that have Gypsy Danger as their standard armored fighting vehicle; thank goodness this hasn't occurred yet). In the end, it becomes a contest in seeing who can wank the hardest. It turns into a roleplay where the hyper-advanced magic-flinging empire is the standard. 

That's ridiculous.  

There's handwavium, and then there's abusing handwavium; having unrestricted access to pseudo-science in a collaborative writing exercise requires one to possess a smidgen of sincerity and restraint.

...Or all measure of consistency and sense can be thrown into the trash and 45 megajoule handguns can be written off as being entirely capable of destroying super heavy tanks but they can somehow fail to penetrate a 15th century suit of plate armor when the writer demands it. 

[quote]Some people want to go hardocre sci-fi[/quote]

The current atmosphere of the RP doesn't even allow this particular style to flourish.