If you add 4 linked weapons to a ship, do you use 1 Hard Point or 4 Hard Points?

Another (related) question: an Heavy Turbolaser requires 1 Hard Point like an Auto-Blaster?

I am not extremely familiar with upgrading ships, as I haven't really messed with it until now; however, I took a look at the text to see how I might interpret it. Here is how it is worded in the Beta rules (page 174):

Hard Points Required: None if replacing an existing weapon system. One if adding new weapon system. Weapon systems combining two or more weapons always cost one hard point, even if replacing an existing weapon system.

After reading through it a couple of times, I can definitely see where your question is coming from. The confusion for me is centered in the difference between a "weapon" and a "weapon system," which is not clearly defined in the book. It helped me to picture the turrets on the Millenium Falcon (link below):

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quad_laser_cannon

These are 4 laser cannons mounted on a single turret which allows them to be added to a single hard point.

In contrast, the Z-95 headhunter has one laser cannon on each wingtip. So, I would think that they are using different hard points, but they are also linked.

I haven't seen any mention of a limit to the number of weapons that can be grouped. Obviously this doesn't make a lot of sense, but the text seems pretty vague about this.

The article linked above does mention that a quad laser cannon is illegal, so as a GM you could consider anything more than 2 linked weapons on a single hard point to be difficult to come by. I imagine mechanics would be hesitant to install them, and doing so could bring some attention to the players' ship.

I'll be curious to see the thoughts of others, but I'll have to stew over it for a bit before making a recommendation.

As for your second question, the text does seem more clear on that. All of the listed weapons upgrades cost the same amount. They cost nothing if they are replacing a previously installed weapon, or one hard point if being added in addition to the previous weapons.

I had looked at the Weapon Upgrade table in the book numerous times and didn't notice that the Quad Laser Cannon was listed there. So, here I thought I was referencing an example outside of the book. It's also interesting to note that many of the specs for larger ships list some variant of twin lasers as a weapon, but none of those are listed on the weapon upgrade table.

Now, I am convinced that these turrets fulfill the desription of "weapon systems combining two or more weapons." After all, the Quad Laser Cannon is a single turret that combines four laser cannons. At first, I thought that "combining" referred to linking, but I think that they would have actually used the word "linking" instead, if that's what they meant.

If that's true, this text is only valid for the Quad Laser Cannon, as it is the only listed weapon system that combines multiple weapons. There may be more weapons in future books that do adhere to this rule, though.

So, what's the verdict?

If you add 4 linked weapons to a ship, it would cost 4 hard points (unless those four weapons were attached to a turret).

Let's hope the complete book is a litte more… clear :-)