[Beck]

To a point I would agree. However since its fairly abstract, there would similiar lapses in realism regardless of the system applied. In your example, one could argue that 8 SM components could be more than equal to 8 armor as the armor may be totally replaced whereby the SM components may have a single item which must be repaired or simply replaced because it was all used up and the repair ability is mimicing having additional supplies of that item. For example single bulb flash cameras. Used once they can not take another flash picture until the bulb is replaced, a simple process. The same simple process could be taking place with the SM components. The only problem I have with going totally to KiloTons is the size of units is frequently not necessarily based on anything but play-balance issues in regard to how many one item should be in a same sized ship in comparsion to another. A better system would be if each component was rated as to the difficulty of the item to repair. This would dictate the length of time to make the repair and could allow for hierachies in which some types of repair would require a visit to a SY as a repair component would be insufficient or could only be completed to a certain level. Armor would be exceedingly difficult to repair while in space and in most cases would require a visit to a SY IMO. Utilizing the current system as to not make too much of a change, one could simply add a line to the components file; "Counts as X components for repair". Then one could modify and make the components repair at different rates.