Of course we can - CT in particular, and Striker is part of that, is rife with errata and other issues with its rules since a lot of them evolved through supplements, LLBs, and articles in JTAS. ...
Yup, it;s full of errata - and when they publish an errata to Striker towed lasers, we'll have an answer. Stretching logic does not constitute an official answer.
It's perfectly logical since there is nothing in the rules to say otherwise. ...
You didn't seriously go there. We
have to do it this way because they didn't say we couldn't??
You have towed lasers, you have to figure out how much the carriage weighs, and you have nothing to guide you on that other than the rules that came before and after. Energy weapons are far more powerful and have enormous recoil..not to mention show up well after CPR guns have reached their limits in TL, while lasers co-exist for the most part with mass drivers at least. And mass drivers use the same rules for carriages as CPR guns. Yes, yes...I know mass drivers have recoil and lasers don't, but my point is that when there isn't anything the go by then it's safer to use the examples at least prior to the design on the TL tree....
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.
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, pretty aren't they? And thank you, I had no idea how one decided on exactly when wheels might be needed on a mortar. Fascinating. ...
Fascinating and beautiful. Wait'll you see the videos on the atomic bomb tests. I have strange tastes.
But as for lasers, a ruggedized, battlefield laser might need a heavier carriage than you think, ...
Might. Might not. No real-world exemplars to go from, and the rules neglect that feature. Ergo the debate - and the uncertainty.
... and since CPR gun carriages are based on the weight of the weapon and lasers are pretty light (like a 50mm AT gun is lighter in all ways than a 203 field howitzer?) then the carriage won't be ridiculous for a battlefield weapon. But that's just in my not-so-humble opinion, too. I suppose the argument could be made for spindly laser carriages in the future with developments in materials technology, ...
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.
...this is, in fact, what I generally have done IMTU since Striker came out. In fact, I doubt if I have a single towed laser in my game anymore since they all tend to be point-defense systems, man-portable, or mounted on vehicles. By TL 13 they lose the instantly-acquired signature and are a little more useful on the battlefield, but by that time things are heading more in the energy weapon direction so lasers are pretty much relegated to point-defense and anti-personnel duty.
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.
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.