And once again I find myself guilty of imprecision. As I said, "neither of the CT rules systems, not Book 2 nor High Guard, sets any limit on a ship using all its available weapons while docking or undocking a subsidiary craft." Ergo the mobile turret serves no purpose within the scope of the combat rules. However, you are correct that Supplement 7, in introducing the turret, also introduces a rule regarding it: the turret is less accurate than its fixed counterpart.
And this is how I interpret a hardpoint as well. In a surface warship, the hardpoint is a reinforced point that can accept an armored turret for a weapon that projects shells by means of a powerful explosive force; it needs to be strong. In an aircraft, it's mainly the issue of being able to handle the aerodynamic forces involved as the aircraft flies with the weapon connected to that hardpoint.
For a ship, the structure of the ship itself dictates the number and strength of the hardpoints - too many or too powerful guns can cause problems for the ship mounting them. Lusitania could be armed, but she was never going to be able to fire the weapons of a dreadnought. (I don't recall whether Titanic was built to be armed.) For an aircraft, performance needs dictate the number of hardpoints. For a scout/courier - well, when we can figure out why a scout/courier should only be able to mount one missile turret or sandcaster turret, then we can figure out whether some construct actually needs more than one hardpoint. As you agree: we don't know. Lacking knowledge, we are ill positioned to speculate on whether a track system would need one or two or three.
Allow me to summarize:
We have an alternate turret system that, by its own rules, is inferior to the standard turret system and that, by Book-2 or High Guard rules, does not actually address a need. Ships fire fine without a track system, even when docking and undocking their boats.
We propose that this inferior system should cost more than the standard turret system in credits and possibly in allocation of hardpoints.
This one, it's a headscratcher. How much does it cost to mount a rail to a hull that's supposedly already as strong as a foot thickness of steel? We don't know. Is that hull-strong-as-a-foot-thickness-of-steel adequate to support a rail, or does it need two or more hardpoints for added strength? We don't know. Any guess would be just that - pure speculation. The standard turret appears to be socketed in some way into the hull. Does it cost more to mount a rail than to attach a turret directly to a hardpoint? We don't know. We don't know how a turret attaches to a hardpoint. We know how much a hardpoint costs, we know how much a turret costs, we have no idea what equipment mates the turret to the hardpoint, nor what fraction of the turret's cost reflects that equipment, nor how the cost of such equipment would compare to the cost of mounting a rail along the hull. For purpose of argument, we will stipulate that it costs more - but we would be guessing if we tried to say how much.
And, by assigning an extra cost, we hope to accomplish - what? An inferior system that costs more and serves no need is not going to be adopted by other players in shipbuilding. In essence, we propose to make a change that affects only a single ship, so that its cost and construction make sense to us. There will be absolutely no other effect on play.
So, the crux of the matter: what gets included in official errata? Any gamemaster is within his rights to make corrections to fix whatever he believes does not make sense in Traveller, for his own personal game setting. For official errata, it's my understanding that they make changes when those changes either have some real impact on the game or resolve some conflict in canon or rules implementation. I could be wrong. Only the powers can say for sure.
I would propose to you that the manufacturer made a flawed product and that the Imperium, for whatever reason, decided to accept the ship rather than reject it at trials or send it back for revision. Maybe there were politics involved, or maybe the authorities judged that the ship was unlikely to see much combat and the degraded performance was not significant enough to warrant rejecting a ship that had made it past completion of the prototype. Maybe there was a pressing need or a deadline to meet, and a slight performance issue in a ship not intended for combat was not worth causing further delays. One way or the other, I would propose to you that a condition of acceptance was that the manufacturer eat the added cost of that inferior turret system. It would be a very small price to pay to salvage a contract that might otherwise have slipped out of their grasp.
In short, I would propose to you that it's easier to make up some workable rationalization than to add a new turret system into canon that, because of its poor performance and possibly added costs, will only ever be used for this one design.
rofl
