You didn't seriously go there. We
have to do it this way because they didn't say we couldn't??
Yes, I did go there...the general rule for role-playing games is that if the rules don't say you can't, then you probably can. Or at least try. It's called using your imagination. Try it sometime. Granted, Striker is a wargame, and you could then argue that if the rules don't say you can so therefore you can't, but you have been arguing both sides of that equation through this thread - so maybe you ought to decide which side of the fence you come down on.
When there isn't anything to go by, you admit there isn't anything to go by. At that point, anything that sounds reasonable is acceptable - as a house rule, perhaps even as common convention if enough people agree to it (at which point one hopes the fix gets adopted as official errata). One does not however declare it to be the official way to do things until and unless it is officially embraced as an errata fix.
I never said it was an official way to do things. I merely suggested one way to settle the issue within the admittedly limited parameters of a clunky design system with gaps. You don't have to like it, nor do you have to use it.
Inasmuch as there are in fact wheeled mortars, and as they seem to bear the weight of the associated weapon just fine, applying the mortar rules would seem to be an acceptable stop-gap. Though it is strictly speaking a stop-gap. I could also go the route of using the vehicle build rules to build a towed "vehicle" that served as a carriage.
Yes, mortar carriages would seem a viable stop-gap. I suggested a different one. Potato - potahto.
And there are rules for building trailers, BTW. And nothing in the rules that says you have to make a vehicle that is self-propelled, so what's your point?
Fascinating and beautiful. Wait'll you see the videos on the atomic bomb tests. I have strange tastes.
As do I, which is why MTU is not the OTU yet still fairly canon with regards to the original CT rules I have used since the ink was still wet in '77.
Might. Might not. No real-world exemplars to go from, and the rules neglect that feature. Ergo the debate - and the uncertainty.
There are some prototypes that were built in the early 80's (Striker publishing era) that were the huge chemical laser types that were on trailers and towed behind the truck housing the power source. At the time it was supposed that battlefield lasers would be used for anti-missile defense and to blind the instruments of aircraft over the battlefield. There was quite the debate going in the Air Force at the time (when I was in it) over how acceptable the "coincidental" blinding of the pilot would be, as well as the blinding of ground troops by ground and airborne versions that were designating targets for Copperhead shells and the then new Hellfires.
Assuming the same methodology that was used by Traveller's original designers to come up with mainframe computers for ships and other anomalies we now wonder at, it can be assumed that they also thought a towed laser would be used. I never agreed with that but I stopped worrying about the other TL discrepancies, too, a long time ago and just go with Striker as is. So I don't put lasers on gun carriages or mortar trailers. But Striker says you can and doesn't change the way gun carriages are made until energy weapons come along so as was mentioned before - gun carriages are a starting point.
A 165 kg carriage under a 660 kg laser is spindly future tech, but a 165 kg carriage under a 660 kg mortar is just fine.
Yes. After all, are we supposed to follow the rules or do it differently because we think we can do it better. You keep arguing either side of that coin.
I can't say that I've ever encountered a towed laser. Only honest way I could see it would be some TL 5 society taking some lucky find from a battle with a higher tech force and trying to put it to their own use. In which case, it'd go on whatever carriage they thought to put it on.
Other than articles and photos in Janes Defense Weekly and some documentaries, neither have I. But then I've never seen a grav tank with a fusion Z gun on it, either.
Let's do a thought experiment: a towed (and necessarily unmanned, at least inside the unit) laser "vehicle," with controls mounted outside the vehicle. My minimum comes out as follows:
TL 9
Dimensions 1.3m length x 1.25m width x 1.24m height
Front, sides, rear all vertical, no slope
Armor factor 1 all around: 0.13 cm comp. laminate (comp. laminate mainly 'cause my vehicle spreadsheet automatically selects armor by base TL - a weakness in my spreadsheet)
Suspension: wheeled, 0.63m width. Ground pressure 4 t/m^3 (won't ever get mired in soft ground or sand. Might get mired in mud on a roll of 11+)
TL 9 PDFC
Chassis-mounted 10 MW 4-pulse laser
Weight of laser + fire control: 1.16 t
Total weight: 2.075 t, an increase of slightly under 1 ton - a chunk more than a mortar carriage, but quite a lot less than a gun carriage, and as near as I can tell, it's completely "legal".
Increasing suspension to yield a ground pressure of 3t/m^3 requires a slightly larger vehicle and results in a weight of around 2.5 tons.
I could take off side, top and rear armor completely, but it doesn't actually save much.
By example, that Marine Dragon Fire weighs about 2 tons for a 120mm mortar and appears to have a pair of 8" (~40cm) wide wheels.
So? You made a little laser trailer by designing a vehicle without a motor. The rules don't say you can't do that (which brings us back to your position that my logic was illogical because I was doing things the rules didn't say I could) so I am unimpressed by your doing it. I have done that forever, even going so far as making grav sleds that act as gun carriages for the weapon mounted on them so long as someone is there to push it when the grav plates are on, when off they ground the weapon and provided a stable platform for absorbing the recoil. Striker is pretty flexible when you use your imagination.
Whups! Now it sounds like you're saying it's an official way to do things.
). 
