Quote:
Originally Posted by Rupert
It says "in a battery", so that probably means you can only group the weapons that are in a single battery.
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You're right, and it doubles down on this on page 57, where it says "All identical fixed mount weapons in the same battery may be fired simultaneously..."
I think the idea of fixed mounts changed between the
Basic Set and
Spaceships. In the
Basic Set, you aim the weapon by aiming the vehicle, rolling the lower of your Gunner skill and your vehicle control skill. In
Spaceships, there's no sign of using Piloting to aim a fixed-mount weapon: you just roll Gunner or Artillery, and "superior focusing or stabilization systems give fixed mounts better range and fire control (a +2 to hit)." There's also no indication that multiple fixed mounts can't fire at different targets; over the course of a space combat turn surely the ship can reorient itself enough to aim at multiple targets facing the same hull section.
My guess is that the rules for using fixed mounts in
Spaceships are simplified from the
Basic Set to avoid the complications of comparing weapon skill with control skill and to avoid the assumption that the pilot is also the one firing the weapon.
The fix would be to go back to using the lower of Piloting or weapon skill and to assume that all fixed mounts in the same hull section fire on the same target regardless of what battery they're in.
I still don't think the
Spaceships rules were meant to stand up to intense scrutiny. They were written to cover a very broad range of possibilities in as generic a way as possible and in as short a format as possible. Some interpretation is called for and even expected.