Starfinder FAQ: Pulse Caster Rifle Clarifications needed!

[SamuraiZero]

I was scouring the FAQ to see what changes have been made over the past year when I was surprised to see the change to the Pulse caster. Now don't get me wrong, it was a cheap way for PC's to get High-Cap batteries, but the change is a little confusing for a number of reasons.

The first is that the Pulse caster is stated as having full capacity of 40 charges, and the Weapons section clearly states that a weapon comes preloaded with its standard ammunition (arrows, charges, bullets, etc). So according the RAW it should come with the full 40, but the FAQ states that it comes only with 20. Also to note, the Pulse caster's use is stated as Use 2, but the FAQ also clarifies this as Cap 20 use 1, which leaves me with a couple of important questions.

Is this FAQ a permanent change to the Pulse caster's capacity, or will players later be able to upgrade the pulse caster to HiCap later (if for some reason they're still using it)?

Is this a complete change to weapon starting ammunition, in which case just how much ammo does a weapon come with?

If I purchased a Pulse Caster Rifle at level 1 (Cap 20 use 1), and upgrade to a High Cap at level 5, will my charge use go back to being use 2?

Does this affect other weapons and their ammo capacity/use, if so how?

[Andy Brown]

FAQs only affect what they say they affect.
In this case it's more of an errata - the pulse caster is changed from capacity 40 / use 2 to capacity 20 / use 1. Nothing else is affected.

[Kitsune Kune]

To elaborate from Andy's statement.

The pulsecaster rifle now defaults at capacity 20/ use 1. You can later upgrade to a high (or super, or ultra) capacity battery later. This increases the capacity, not the usage of the pulsecaster. (So the ultra-capacity would give your pulsecaster 100 shots.) This has not changed the base battery size, usage, etc. of any other equipment.

This change was put into place, because the rifle was cheaper than the high-cap battery. Meaning people were talking about just buying the rifle instead, and ripping the high-cap out of the pulsecaster to use in their other guns.

[Andy Brown]

The equipment rules (CRB pg 170 'Reading Weapon Tables', 'Capacity') say that the weapon in the table lists the highest capacity battery a weapon can hold, so you can't use a high capacity battery in a weapon unless the weapon listing includes a high capacity battery to start with. You can use a lower capacity battery than the weapon originally comes with, but not the other way round.