Tony, basically I think the same way as you, I can't see the Project focusing so much effort on rescuing people and setting up huge caches to build refugee camps because I am of the understanding that the Project's mission was to provide a core group of people who remembered skills and knowledge from the pre-apocalypse. That is to say, their job was to check out what had happened and then decide who best to help - and their help consisted of teaching the survivors how to rebuild some semblance of their old society based on all the skills/knowledge they Team has along with whatever supplies they can get from the local area.
It seems redundant for MP to stash massive amounts of supplies to set up refugee camps when there are other organizations as well as the government itself who would already be doing that sort of thing. I see it as a case of MP's aim was to "fill in the gaps", not simply replace the government efforts. Recce teams should be doing exactly that, reconnaissance, science teams should be do the science stuff and so on and so on.
The game really takes off for me when these teams get involved in the rescue side of things knowing full well they do not have the resources to rescue everyone. That's when you start to get some really involved RP sessions because the players have to start coming up with ideas on how to get enough supplies, how to protect them and transport them and then how to stop somebody else taking them away from the people they're trying to help.
To me, TMP is about teams who find themselves out of their depth - they woke up too late, they have too little help, they have too few resources and they have too much to do. For me that's the challenge of the game, if the teams have too many supplies, it becomes too easy for the players.
As Tony said, this isn't a flame so much as a critique.
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