clarification on reply links and node comment types?

The Scenario:
Product page "Gear" (gear) -- custom content type, comments enabled read/write, node comment type: "Gear Review". Comment form on separate page

Gear Review (gear_review): a review of the product in the form of a comment with ratings. Comments on reviews are on, read/write, node comment type: Gear Review Reply. Comment form on separate page.

Gear Review Reply (gear_review_reply): basic node comment type, comments are on, node comment type set to self. comment form on separate page.

The Problem:
Gear reviews work perfectly. However, on the gear review page, the drupal-generated links are not pointing to the gear-review-reply content type, they're pointing to gear-review. So instead of a simple comment on the review, we're getting the full review form, with fivestar ratings, etc.

For example, if you're viewing a gear review page, and you click the drupal-generated "Reply" link, the path is:

where 11 is the nid for the product being reviewed, and 295 is the product review you're responding to. Shouldn't it be more like:

?

I have triple checked that the comments for reviews are pointed to the gear_review_reply content type, and that the comments for gear_review_reply are set to gear_review_reply. In fact, I just quadruple checked it before posting this.

Is it not possible to have a node comment use itself as the comment type? in this scenario, we could use drupal comments, but we'd really like to keep things completely in nodes if possible, for future flexibility.