The price of a weapon fusion is determined by the item level of the weapon receiving the fusion, so your math is correct. The item level of the actual fusions is only relevant for determining if fusions may be applied to a weapon, and how many may be applied to the same weapon.
Note that his costs will be cheaper if he has at least 1 rank in Engineering or Mysticism (the latter is true of almost all Mystics), access to a friend with it, or access to hiring a professional to do some work for him, and depend on what he has on hand. Also, there is no Ghost Touch fusion, so I'll assume you mean Ghost Killer, and assume he has none of his old equipment on hand from when he was lower level, and that he has to hire an Engineer/Mysticism professional:
0) Hire a professional freelancer with a bonus of 1 in Engineering for 2 credits for the day (page 235). Have him come with you.
1) Go to a weapons shop. Have a brief discussion with the GM about the fact that page 169 indicates virtually anything can be used to kill someone, treating it as a club; what you need is an official ruling on which objects can receive a weapon fusion. I will assume your GM is ultraconservative, and e.g. bans you from applying a fusion to any of the murder weapons from Clue, like rope.
2) Purchase an ultra-capacity battery for 445 credits, and see if the shopkeeper will sell you a single heavy round for 5 credits. Assuming he will not, buy 20 for 90.
3) Install Ghost Killer in the battery (360 credits - ammunition cost half as much to seal, page 192).
4) Have your professional move the seal to the Swoop Hammer for 1300 credits and 10 minutes.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 with Holy, but using the heavy weapon round.
Result: You are out 3677 credits, not 5200. You can reduce this by 2 credits by performing the Engineering or Mysticism work yourself, and in general you can reduce costs by holding onto the ammunition; if you keep 1 piece of ammo in the party from levels 1 to 5, you will have the vast majority of seals covered, letting you buy seals at half the cost of a weapon level equal to their item level plus half the cost for the target weapon. We have no L6+ ammunition, so for higher-end seals, like Corrosive, you'll want to pick up an L10 grenade arrow.
4) Have your professional move the seal to the Swoop Hammer for 1300 credits and 10 minutes.
Oh... I see. RAW, the cost is only based on the item the fusion is going to, and the item the fusion is coming from is irrelevant. That means you effectively pay only 1/2 the price for almost all fusions, minus some overhead (the cost of ammo and lower-level fusion). Yeah, that's going to get houseruled at my table real quick. I don't like this kind of bookkeeping loophole.
I think the shopkeeper would kick you out and warn all his colleagues. Better buy an insurance on your knee caps...
A few of the level calculations actually work against you. Mostly it's only relatively close moves (and not coming from ammo, IIRC). For example, I believe 2->4 costs you an extra 20 credits, and there was one that cost something like an extra 100, I think. I went through the whole chart in Excel at one point, but it's sitting on my work computer.
I remember people discussing this a while ago. Have devs not commented on this exploit? As far as I can tell it's still SFS-legal.
The rule needs to read: To transfer a fusion, pay the full cost of the fusion on the new item minus half the cost of the fusion on the old item; fusions can't be transferred from higher-to-lower level weapons. There, problem solved. Works the same as the present system if the items are the same level.
Or, to make the rules simpler (for mostly the same effect): Fusions, unlike other items, can be removed and sold for half price. If you need an in-world reason...The Fusion Consortium (or whoever) is generous and wants to encourage the use and re-use of fusions.
Others are kind of exaggerating how complicated this exploit is. No shopkeepers are going to kneecap you. All you need for 1st-level fusions is a wooden club, a bag of "fusion-transferring ingredients", 1 rank in Mysticism, and 10 minutes. Congrats, for a 9th-level weapon you're paying 1,420 for your fusion instead of 2,600. That's a difference of 3.6% of your 8th-level WBL.
And the fact is you could still legitimately exploit this by accident. You buy a fusion for some old backup weapon of yours. You realize that weapon is no longer useful. You transfer it to a brand new weapon you buy. Bam, you might have just saved a bunch of credits vs. buying it for that new weapon in the first place.
4) Have your professional move the seal to the Swoop Hammer for 1300 credits and 10 minutes.Oh... I see. RAW, the cost is only based on the item the fusion is going to, and the item the fusion is coming from is irrelevant. That means you effectively pay only 1/2 the price for almost all fusions, minus some overhead (the cost of ammo and lower-level fusion). Yeah, that's going to get houseruled at my table real quick. I don't like this kind of bookkeeping loophole.
The problem isn't so much that a competent person can get fusions cheaply, the core of the problem is:
a) Professionals are nonsensically cheap to hire - it takes exponential amounts of training to make a more highly trained professional, but their pay rate is linear. As a result, even if you had to hire a better Engineer or Mystic, the overhead would remain insignificant. This problem is broadly true across the board, which sidelines many otherwise potentially interesting skills for the players - for example, the cost to simply hire a Life Scientist to work for you is insignificant.
b) Competence is not required in any of the crafting rules - crafting in the first place is purely rank based, and fusion moving doesn't even need more than 1 rank. This means cheaper fusions aren't something a player has to work towards, making it feel like a loophole or exploit, not something earned.
Something tricky to handle is that fusions are meant to be loot, as seen in the Adventure Paths, so simply making the concept go away means fundamentally changing how you regard loot drops with fusions on them. It's not a huge problem, but you do need to pay attention to it when providing loot.
I would suggest house ruling as follows, to simply make the whole thing more reasonable, without making it go away:
0) Hiring a professional now costs bonus^2 credits per day. This is still extremely small, but very noticeably more expensive than the stock rate.
1) Moving an LZ Fusion from an LX item to an LY item requires both an Engineering check and a Mysticism check, although these can be made by two separate people working together.
2) As mentioned, it takes checks (although you can usually take 10 on it, since it usually won't happen in combat), rather than simply auto-succeeding if you have a single rank. The DC is 8+X+Y+Z. Each check takes 8+X+Y+Z minutes, although they can be done in parallel if two people are working together. For each point above the DC rolled on the check, you can reduce this time by 1 minute, to a minimum of 10 minutes.
3) You have to spend UPBs/ritual components equal to half the source fusion plus half the target, rather than just half the target. This makes the trick I described still work - which is intended, to reward skilled players - but increases overhead again. These credits are spent each time a pair of checks above are made, and are wholly wasted if either check fails.
So now, moving Ghost Killer (an L5 fusion) from L5 ammo to an L9 Swoop Hammer is a pair of DC 27 checks; your overhead for the professional (who will take 10s, and need 54 minutes to work, or 27 minutes if you hire a team, not 10 minutes) will be 578 credits (you'll want to hire one with a +17 bonus), not 2. Your cost to move the fusion becomes 1300+180=1480, not 1300. The net result is that if you do the whole thing from scratch, you lose money - it costs 2863 credits, but a new one would just be 2600 credits. The lion's share of your overhead is the assistant(s), so if someone in the party does the work, your cost drops to 2285 - not a lot less than 2600, but definitely less, rewarding your players for investing their skill ranks in crafting skills.
Let's say I have a fusion seal glammered (on a laser pistol lvl 1) this seal cost 132cr. How can I later transfer this seal to a lvl 3 weapon?
Fusion seals are purchased at a set level (in this case a glamered fusion seal (level 1)) that can only be used on a weapon with a minimum level equal or greater than the base fusion (in this case level 1, since glamered is a level 1 fusion) and a maximum level of no more than the level the fusion seal is bought at (in this case, also level 1). On the other hand, you can quickly switch the fusion seal to and from any level 1 weapon whenever you want at no additional cost.
To transfer the seal to a level 3 weapon, you need a level 3 (or higher) fusion seal: with 3 ranks in Mysticism, you can create a glamered fusion seal (level 3) for 471 credits (assuming you scavenge the level 1 fusion seal for parts). You could also ask your GM if you could be allowed to just upgrade the fusion seal's level to a glamered fusion seal (level 3) at a better cost saving than the "scavenge similar items for parts" 10% value; 15%, 20%, or even 25% might not be too unbalancing.
INSTALLING AND TRANSFERRING FUSIONS
A fusion can be installed in a chosen weapon when it’s purchased or at any point afterward. It’s also possible, though difficult and fairly expensive, to transfer fusions from one weapon to another. Any character trained in Mysticism can transfer a fusion; this costs half as much as it would to initially purchase the fusion, using the level of the new weapon to determine the price. Characters trained in Engineering or Mysticism can also install fusions, if necessary (for instance, if the PCs find an unused fusion as part of a treasure cache, or in the case of a character who used Mysticism to craft a fusion). In either case, installing or transferring a fusion takes about 10 minutes of uninterrupted tinkering.
For a level 1 to level 3 move, that's 10 minutes + 120 (what you payed for the initial level 1 fusion) + .5*440 (another 220 for the level 3 weapon) =360 credits. That's 80 less than you'd pay to normally install a level 3 weapon with a level 1 fusion.
EDIT: To be clear, the above is for a normal weapon fusion, not a fusion seal. The fusion seals are different, but it looks like Dragonchess Player already covered that.
Let's say I have a fusion seal glammered (on a laser pistol lvl 1) this seal cost 132cr. How can I later transfer this seal to a lvl 3 weapon?
You can't. A 132 credit Fusion Seal is Level 1, and you'd need a Level 3 Seal. Remember, Seals are items that can hold fusions and then apply them to what the Seal is applied to - if you wanted that to work, you'd need to buy a Level 3 Seal with Glamered on it, which would then work on weapons level 1-3.
It's also important to point out that Seals take very, very significantly longer to transfer than normal fusions - 1 minute to physically move the seal, then 24 hours to get the seal's fusion to turn back on, so 24 hours and 1 minute total, as opposed to 10 minutes and done for a standard transfer.
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INSTALLING AND TRANSFERRING FUSIONS
A fusion can be installed in a chosen weapon when it’s purchased or at any point afterward. It’s also possible, though difficult and fairly expensive, to transfer fusions from one weapon to another. Any character trained in Mysticism can transfer a fusion; this costs half as much as it would to initially purchase the fusion, using the level of the new weapon to determine the price. Characters trained in Engineering or Mysticism can also install fusions, if necessary (for instance, if the PCs find an unused fusion as part of a treasure cache, or in the case of a character who used Mysticism to craft a fusion). In either case, installing or transferring a fusion takes about 10 minutes of uninterrupted tinkering.For a level 1 to level 3 move, that's 10 minutes + 120 (what you payed for the initial level 1 fusion) + .5*440 (another 220 for the level 3 weapon) =360 credits. That's 80 less than you'd pay to normally install a level 3 weapon with a level 1 fusion.
EDIT: To be clear, the above is for a normal weapon fusion, not a fusion seal. The fusion seals are different, but it looks like Dragonchess Player already covered that.
okay, so transfer equation total cost=(original cost + 1/2 * new weapon lvl cost). So this means that I would be paying the lvl 1 fusion cost two times? E.X. early on I already paid for the level 1 fusion (120cr), then to transfer it to a lvl weapon I would then pay 360cr? so in the end I would have ended up paying 480cr for this fusion, correct?
No, you don't pay the original cost twice. I only listed it because it's included in the total of what you'll eventually pay. The only part you pay at the time of transfer is half the cost of putting the fusion on the new weapon.
There's been a lot of debate about how they intended for it to work. Right now, though, by RAW it's almost always cheaper to install everything on a level 1 or level 2 item first then move it.