Thomas Shey
Legend
I actually preferred Greg Porter's original TimeLords (not to be confused with EABA TImeLords) and SpaceTime to EABA (1e or 2e). IMHO, SpaceTime had the best damage modelling of any game I have seen. Sadly, he doesn't make those editions available in PDF. The above two system even predate his CORPS system (the predecessor to EABA). Only the EABA based Timelords is available as a PDF now.
I used to be too, until I did more research over time and concluded that death spiral damage systems are actually a poor representation of reality. In practice, impairment during a given combat exchange is really rare for a number of reasons, and that damage system was pretty thoroughly wrapped around that. The vast majority of combat effects can be summarized as you shock out (either mentally or physically), you bleed out (either within or outside of the combat time frame), or nothing particularly short term meaningful. A very small number of injuries are sufficiently coarse that they either kill you outright or prevent you from doing certain things, but the vast majority of the rest get (temporarily) papered over by adrenaline (or are lost in the impairment the adrenaline surge itself has caused when it started. Or both).
Part of the reason I got into martial arts when I was younger and took fencing in college, was I wanted to know the answer to the age old TTRPG'er (and HEMA/SCA) question "who would win in a fight, a Samurai or a 17th century european fencer" (short answer, much to the chagrin of Samurai/Kendo/Bokken/Iaido fans is; don't underestimate a fencer either with a rapier or a sabre)? As for the concern that "reality" is just something players agree upon, that's only a workable compromise when no one in the group knows otherwise. Imagine for example, a GM rules that while adventuring underwater, you can use a bluetooth earphones to communicate with your scuba diving buddies. Except...you cant, because the water will block the signal. If no one in the group realizes that fact, fine, move along. But what if a player knows that's impossible and challenges the GM's ruling? I actually have deep concerns about "reality as a consensus".
Yeah, I've commented that even when a set of rules are wrong, they at least give people playing a consistent set of expectations that on-the-fly ruling really can't unless everyone's understanding of the situation is the same.