Mini Rocket Platforms : Only Light or Mini Rockets ?

[swordtart]

I was looking at CW third edition and that didn't mention a D1 hazard for firing ATG, nor did Delux, they simply prohibit side firing at all.

Later Truckstop introduced the TG (also F/B) with the D2 hazard. It also seems to have introduced the rocket platform but limited it to HR only (but this may have been the only single shot rocket available at the time).

It seems a later edition (or probably an ADQ&Q) introduced the rule allowing AT guns to be fired from the side from oversized vehicles and brought in the D1 hazard for this condition at this time.

It may have been a misunderstanding by one of the editors of the day or a tournament ref that saw the brief confusion that firing an ATG was always a D1 hazard which then made it back into UACFH.

CW "just growed" like Topsy and drifted out of synch with itself and even within the same supplement. I hoped UACFH would finally fix that, but in cases it made it worse and because it published the equipment shorn of the rules that went along with them we ended up with a book that perpetuated nonsense.

In CW all of it is canon and none of it is canon.

None of this really helps with the question "Should you be able to use an Arty rocket on a Rocket Platform". For this we need to piece it all together and form an opinion.

From CW Tanks:
1) Arty is designed to bombard an area, not as single shot sniping weapons.
2) Atry suffers a penalty to hit unless the vehicle has recoil spades. Should this apply to Rockets. A 75mm TG suffers no penalty but a 50mm Arty does. Why should they? Because the rules say they should and presumably some design compromises have been made to give them that HUGE burst effect. As this applies to all Arty, Arty rockets also suffer that penalty.
3) Can you mount a 1-space rocket on a mini rocket platform? Depends on which version, but I don't see why it should make any difference for a supposedly recoilless weapon and it adds complication with another exception so I am going to chose to believe it was removed intentionally.
4) Is an Arty Rocket the same as any other single-shot rocket? Even in UACFH it is listed in a separate section to the "Rocket Weapons", so there is a good argument that the general rocket rules don't apply to Arty Rockets.

For me the crux is that all Arty Rockets are a single space and that allows the use of a 15D weapon on a subcompact.

Fires as a bog standard rocket, NO.

Fired using the Artillery rules, YES
...Set-up and braced with recoil spades or -2 (assumption is that spades only affect weapons fired into the front arc).
...Artillery skill rather than Gunner.
...Battery fire only possible if all the vehicles are stationary and braced.
...Flight time of the Rockets also needs to be considered but for direct fire this unlikely to be an issue.
...Peds only take 1D from Arty, with the possibility of avoiding it entirely if prone etc.

With all those rules in place a single Arty Rocket, even an R7 isn't that game breaking, wherever it is launched from.