I was designing a wet navy missile cruiser and going through the capital weapons rules when I realized that under the rules there are no circumstances under which a Rattler can ever fire its sub-capital lasers. Under the Capital Weapons Fire in Atmosphere rules on pg. 103 in Strat-Ops:
"The following bullet points list which rules to use in this section, based on attacker and target locations. If a situation is not listed below, then the attack cannot be made using capital or sub-capital weapons; for example, an airborne-to-airborne attack cannot be made."
A ground based direct capital weapon can only fire is in Surface-to-Orbit fire:
"Surface-to-Orbit: Attacker is located on a ground mapsheet (including landed aerospace units) and is targeting a unit in a space hex."
So a Rattler under the rules cannot use its SL/3 to shoot at ground units or at units in an atmosphere. The SL/3 is medium range and can't reach out of the atmosphere so technically, unless firing from airless planet, it can never legally be fired unless you house-rule capital weapons to be able to make Surface-to-Airborne attacks on the high-altitude map or Ground-to-Air attacks on the low-altitude map. Am I reading this correctly?
