(Answered) Chemical lasers and vehicle engine hits

[A. Lurker]

Per Total Warfare page 195, an engine critical hit on a vehicle disables all direct-fire energy and pulse weapons (among its other effects). Strictly by-the-book, this would also apply to chemical lasers (Tactical Operations pages 319/20, stats on pages 406/7), since they do have the "DE" code for direct-fire energy. Yet at the same time, they're at least partially also considered ballistic weapons for construction purposes, are ammo-dependent, and their entire concept basically seems to revolve around the notion that they're not actually powered by the engine.

So, should a vehicle with a chemical laser and a critically hit engine still be able to fire that laser (assuming a target happens to wander into the appropriate firing arc) or not?

[Xotl]

Upcoming errata:

Chemical Lasers (p. 320)
Under “Game Rules”, at the end of the paragraph insert the following:

When mounted on a vehicle, Chemical Lasers still function if the vehicle’s engine is critically hit.

[A. Lurker]

Thanks.

That actually leads me to a followup question: would the same hold true for fuel-based (i.e., heavy and vehicle) flamers? They seem to be by and large in the same boat -- need ammunition, don't need power amplifiers or heat sinks (at least as far as I'm aware in the case of the heavy, I'm not sure if that's quite formally stated anywhere) --, but I'm not sure it's quite safe to generalize.

[Xotl]

Good question.  The answer is yes: further errata will be added to the heavy flamer and vehicle flamer.