[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Not to be glib, but because gadgets appear on an equipment table with a TL column.

It's where a busy GM points their players to and says "choose anything from TL6 without a ^ marker".

Whether technology of mundane providence but marvelous performance, such as Nautilus' superbatteries, should be classed as superscience is a more meta question. There have been many similar arguments here where people have wanted to apply the superscience label, when for example the performance of mundane spaceship rockets has been optimistically enhanced for narrative reasons, or looking at X-ray lasers which just combine two existing mundane technologies in an optimistic manner.

It looks like we need a new label for mundane but cinematic technology, as I'd prefer to save the superscience label for the real comic book or space opera level of impossible technology.

Spaceships uses 'limited superscience' to describe torch drives that use legitimate operating principles and plausible Isp values but have thrust levels that imply rather unmanageable power densities.