Ok. Hi everyone!

First, an easy question that i am sure has been asked plenty of times:

I understand the rule regarding weapon upgrade. You can replace any weapon with another weapon legit on your ship, at no Hard point cost.

However, you cannot replace a weapon with a weapon system involving multiple weapons. Theae cost 1 hard point more. Gotcha.

However, what if i replace a Double Medium laser canon (2 weapons) for a Double Heavy laser canon, would that cost me 1 hardpoint? Or the rule is there to prevent "weapon system abuse", and we should go with simple 1 for 1 weapons?

Also, regarding the operation of a ship. Can Turret-mounted guns be operated from the pilot seat? Lets say the Pilot is doing fine with his piloting and want to take a shot from his dorsal (unmanned) gun, is he allowed, or these guns HAVE to be manned?

Finally, what upgrade do you think solo made to his ship to have the repeating gun he deploys in ESB? A heavy repeating blaster, perhaps?

However, what if i replace a Double Medium laser canon (2 weapons) for a Double Heavy laser canon, would that cost me 1 hardpoint? Or the rule is there to prevent "weapon system abuse", and we should go with simple 1 for 1 weapons?

I don’t know that this is clearly covered under the rules-as-written (RAW), or that the developers have clarified this rule (where people have posted the private answers they got in the thread “FFG Developer Answered Questions”).

However, in my game, if you’re replacing a double medium laser cannon with a double heavy laser cannon, that seems to me like it shouldn’t take another hardpoint. That would be the same logical type of upgrade as you’d get if you were replacing a single medium with a single heavy.

But that’s IMO, and YMMV.

Also, regarding the operation of a ship. Can Turret-mounted guns be operated from the pilot seat? Lets say the Pilot is doing fine with his piloting and want to take a shot from his dorsal (unmanned) gun, is he allowed, or these guns HAVE to be manned?

I’d have to find the actual rule in question, but I believe that according to RAW, the pilot is capable of firing any weapons on the ship, unless specifically indicated otherwise. It is possible that this rule applies only to ships that are Silhouette 4 or lower, so Capital Ships would not be able to do this sort of thing.

If the weapons were in a fixed facing and not in a turret or otherwise facing the same general direction as the pilot, I think I might require that an Advanced Targeting Computer upgrade be installed, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to fire that weapon effectively, and they’d suffer difficulty upgrades/increases and/or setback from trying to do so.

Finally, what upgrade do you think solo made to his ship to have the repeating gun he deploys in ESB? A heavy repeating blaster, perhaps?

I’m pretty sure those aren’t covered in any current book.

In my game, I’d have them buy/steal/acquire the personal-scale weapons (probably E-Web Heavy Repeating Blasters), and then spend a hard point to turn them into a “ground defense system”. One hard point would be enough to cover up to four or five different locations where blasters were installed on pintle mounts, and they’d be able to pay extra to have them retractable behind camouflaged covers.

But that would simply allow the pilot to fire them remotely — if you want them as an automatic self-defense system, you’d need to pay extra to install droid brains as Minion or Rival fire controllers.

The groundbuzzer blaster is in Fly Casual.

The groundbuzzer blaster is in Fly Casual.

Indeed, I found it on page 62. And a much better solution than my horked-up homegrown mish-mash.

That’s a great catch! Thanks!

However, what if i replace a Double Medium laser canon (2 weapons) for a Double Heavy laser canon, would that cost me 1 hardpoint? Or the rule is there to prevent "weapon system abuse", and we should go with simple 1 for 1 weapons?

Replacing a Medium Dual Laser Cannon with a Heavy Dual Laser Cannon, would be a no hardpoint cost, you are not increasing the "weapon count" of the hardpoint, so there is nothing extra having to be fitted on. Now if you say replaced it with a Heavy Triple Laser Cannon, it would be a cost of 1 Hardpoint as you are upping the "weapon count" to 3 now.

Also, I usually allow my pilots to fire an un-manned turret, though only in the forward arc. It doesn't really make sense to me that a pilot is flying the ship, can also track a TIE Fighter that is off the starboard side of his ship, it splits his attention too much IMO.

I think the technical breakdown of the weapon swap is that the original weapon (Dual Meds) takes up 2 HP's, you take it off and get 2 HP's, you then install the new weapon (Dual Heavies) and take up 2 HP's. If you were to go from a Dual Med to a single Heavy I would expect that you would have a net gain of 1 HP. Which also means I would expect that you could strip a weapon heavy ship of its weapon mounts to gain that many HP's. But I'm following a logic train and not necessarily any RAW.

As for firing while piloting, I would agree that the pilot could fire anything in the forward arc, but would have to pick a single weapon to fire unless they had linked.

In an odd case I could see equipping all of a ship's turrets capable of shooting forward with Linked and just disabling that quality as needed to man the turret individually (assumedirectcontrol.jpg). Elsewise it becomes locked forward and under command of the pilot. Sure, you might end up with an XWing's level of redundant linking but *shrug* maybe your pilot is also your ship's best shooter.

I think the technical breakdown of the weapon swap is that the original weapon (Dual Meds) takes up 2 HP's, you take it off and get 2 HP's, you then install the new weapon (Dual Heavies) and take up 2 HP's. If you were to go from a Dual Med to a single Heavy I would expect that you would have a net gain of 1 HP. Which also means I would expect that you could strip a weapon heavy ship of its weapon mounts to gain that many HP's. But I'm following a logic train and not necessarily any RAW.

Absolutely agreed, and I think you could even say it -is- RAW because it is just an extrapolation of the equation they use to determine hardpoint usage. I mean, that hardpoint has to go -somewhere- when you pull the laser cannon off, it doesn't just not exist anymore.

And yes, I was operating on the premise that a Dual Medium Laser Cannon was "stock model".

In an odd case I could see equipping all of a ship's turrets capable of shooting forward with Linked and just disabling that quality as needed to man the turret individually (assumedirectcontrol.jpg). Elsewise it becomes locked forward and under command of the pilot. Sure, you might end up with an XWing's level of redundant linking but *shrug* maybe your pilot is also your ship's best shooter.

It would certainly be better than not being able to fire the weapons at all.

In an odd case I could see equipping all of a ship's turrets capable of shooting forward with Linked and just disabling that quality as needed to man the turret individually (assumedirectcontrol.jpg). Elsewise it becomes locked forward and under command of the pilot. Sure, you might end up with an XWing's level of redundant linking but *shrug* maybe your pilot is also your ship's best shooter.

It would certainly be better than not being able to fire the weapons at all.

Agreed. Though a slightly more effective idea would be to have at least gunner's seat with a similar view as the pilot (perhaps the co-pilot's seat?) and link half the guns to the pilot, the other half to the gunner's seat (/co-pilot) that way there's a better chance of them all being used. Obviously the ideal case would be every gun gets a gunner, but sometimes you can't manage that.

Further, and using the YT-1300 as an example, with the guns simply linked to each other on command, one turret gunner could activate the link, and fire both the ventral and dorsal guns to the rear arc while the pilot pilots. Since he'd have view on the rear arc (though admittedly not the opposite region he was sitting in. Unless you installed cameras and viewscreens to see what the other turret sees, but at that point the opposite gun is blocked and you shouldn't get the linked bonus anyway, you'd just be remote controlling the turret you're not in. And at that point you might as well just ditch the individual turret bubbles and get a gun control room with 360* view of the ship using cameras and an IMAX-esq viewscreen. Why yes, I've thought about this a lot.)

By raw a weapon system only ever takes one hard point to install. No matter how many lasers you link together it takes 1HP to install them.

When replacing a system if you are installing a liked multi weapon system it still costs 1 HP instead of 0

However I would house rule, as people have said here, that if the system is being replaced with the same number of weapons it still takes 0 HP.

Bringing it all together, upgrading twin med lasers to twin large lasers would normally take 1HP by RAW but most people would wave it to none since it's the same number of weapons. If you wanted a triple or quad liked heavy laser it would take 1HP even if replacing a twin med laser

I think the technical breakdown of the weapon swap is that the original weapon (Dual Meds) takes up 2 HP's, you take it off and get 2 HP's, you then install the new weapon (Dual Heavies) and take up 2 HP's. If you were to go from a Dual Med to a single Heavy I would expect that you would have a net gain of 1 HP. Which also means I would expect that you could strip a weapon heavy ship of its weapon mounts to gain that many HP's. But I'm following a logic train and not necessarily any RAW.

The same goes for removing a factory installed weapons system, it will only net you 1HP.

I thought it was a base of 1HP for a weapon, and then 1 more HP to make it a system?
So, either that was wrong of me, or...

If you remove a stock system and gain only 1 HP, but then decide to reinstall the exact same system later... it costs you 2? Which couldn't be right.

I did know it was only 1 extra to make it a system, and not say, 1 extra per added weapon (that would get silly), but I don't see why you wouldn't get the full value of HP's back if you uninstalled them?

Thanks a lot for your answers guys

I always compare the crew complement with the weapons on a ship to see how they would fire, and I assume that (other than a few exceptions) most turret-mounted weapons are distinct from the cockpit. So if a ship has a pilot, copilot, 2 other crewmen and two turrets, I assume that each turret must be individually manned; a ship like that would require at least one person in the cockpit, preferably two, and each gun needs one person to function. If the same ship has a fire arc forward medium laser cannon in addition to the turrets, I assume it can be linked to the cockpit and fired by the pilot/copilot. I would say that for a pilot to fire all the different weapon systems on a ship, it would require extensive and expensive modifications.

But that's just my way.

I thought it was a base of 1HP for a weapon, and then 1 more HP to make it a system?

So, either that was wrong of me, or...

If you remove a stock system and gain only 1 HP, but then decide to reinstall the exact same system later... it costs you 2? Which couldn't be right.

I did know it was only 1 extra to make it a system, and not say, 1 extra per added weapon (that would get silly), but I don't see why you wouldn't get the full value of HP's back if you uninstalled them?

Pg 271 for Upgraded Weapons "Hard Points Required: 0 if replacing an existing weapon system. 1 if adding new weapon system. Weapon systems combining two or more weapons al­ways cost one hard point, even if replacing an existing weapon system"

In the core book a weapon system never costs more than 1 HP. If you where replacing a single laser with a twin laser it would still take that 1HP and if you installed a twin torpedo launcher from scratch it would cost 1HP.

Note there are not actually rules (that I know of) for removing "factory" equipment, just upgrading or replacing weapons. Such a process would be long and complicated.

Hmm, fair enough then