For what it is worth, I too spent an insane amount of time examining the rules on this issue, and started to write my "opinions" on the matter. I too attempted to look at subsequent designs of ships printed long after High Guard came out. For example? If you look at the Alien Modules, you will find that they (the publisher) used strictly Book 2 designs for the ships without bothering to list HG stats for the various ships. I also noted, that not a single ship design listed the books I checked, had designs for ship hulls larger than 1,000 dtons, which means that subsequent published material, even if converted over to HG stats, would have been covered by the rule of either uniform weapon turrets, or by the Mixed weapon turrets.
For me, the big problem stems from the fact that in order to answer a specific question, the reader of the rules has to make a ruling based on what is written right?
So why then, does it state on page 34 does it read:
"A small craft may mount the equivalent of one turret. In actuality, the mountings are probably rigid, and no actual turret is present."
Then later state in that same paragraph:
"The pilot is assumed to be the gunner for one type of weapon on the craft. If additional types are mounted (a craft could conceivably have three different types of weapons), a gunner is required for each additional weapon."
Are we talking such that each weapon TYPE is a battery, or that each weapon itself is a battery? Mind you, I'm not even touching the rules section for "Mixed weapon turrets" as technically speaking, we're not even discussing a "turret" so much as a "Turret equivalent".
My take on the matter is this:
Weapons of a type in a single "turret" or "Turret equivalent" are to be grouped together unless they can independently be fired at another target. For example? A fixed mount that permits limited field of fire aim point changes (ie a chin mount that can change its point of aim at a target within a cone that is within 15 degrees of the true center of aim for that rigid mount) might be aimed towards Target A, while a dorsal mount with the ability to change its point of aim by 15 degrees in a cone can fire at a slightly different aim point on the same target caught within that one. Now you have two separate firing stations, and probably need two separate gunners to handle both stations at the same time. Problem here is (at least for me), that HG talks about separate weapon mounts as batteries, and talks about weapon TYPES. A single gunner can handle a given "Type" and a turret (or turret equivalent) with more than one type requires more than one gunner.
I guess in the end analysis, I favor the following interpretation:
Direct fire weapons in a fixed mount turret configuration (ie three lasers permanently anchored within the turret such that all three barrels of the laser are always the same distance from each other, and all three "vectors" formed by the three barrels will always be the same regardless of how the gunner orients his turret - must always fire together as a battery while they occupy the same turret. If fire control requires that 5 turrets be configured to work together for a single aim point under the control of a single gunner (sort of like when you place 4 wing mount guns on either wing side to fight straight ahead), you can configure an optimal spread of lasers to increase your chance of hitting with a single laser, at the expense of making certain that the rest of the lasers will automatically miss.
Consequently, this is why battery configuration has to be done BEFORE the battle starts, and that each battery can not be configured on the fly after the battle starts. I also favor the concept that if you have enough gunners, that Individual turrets can be released from the Master battery controller to fire independently, but can not return to their Massive battery control configuration until the battle is over and the turrets can be reconfigured again. But I digress...
Weapons of a type, in a fixed turret configuration, have to be treated as multiple weapons in a battery. Two missile launchers in the same turret automatically have to be treated as a "battery" simply because they are firing at the same target at the same time from the same gunner at the same ship from the same fixed mountings. Treating them as separate weapons at the same time as permitting them to fire as a battery causes the logical disconnect we're seeing overall in this discussion.
Ironically enough? Until someone brought up the issue of using the Mixed weapon rules, none of this was ever an issue. If people want to be strict in their reading of the rules, specifying that in CT's Book 2, one gunner can man a single turret and fire all the weapons within that turret, then simply remind them that if one is to use the CT book 2 rules strictly as well, then turret operators may not fire Fusion guns, Plasma Guns, nor Particle guns, but there are no rules for using them in CT Book 2 based games.
You won't for example, find examples of fusion gun armed ships in any of the Alien Module ship descriptions - as they don't exist.
Often, it occurs where the situation arises where you find yourself in agreement with this quote:
"What you asssumed I meant when I said what I said, is not what I meant when I said what I said"
When things get to the point where two people can honestly hold an opinion on what was meant when they read what they read, and those two viewpoints are opposed, then we can only conclude that the specific passage being read was poorly constructed. God Made laws, but the Devil made lawyers...
I would be very carefull about using canon designs in this way, an example doesn't preclude other options.
