from the rules I am assuming one can refit weapon mounts added to the frame.. an example if you bought an additional light mount,, you could remove the mount from the frame and use the BP somewhere else.
But what about the factory installed mounts that come with the frame ?
I am thinking you could not remove the factory installed mount and use the extra bp in other places..
but I'm not seeing a problem with moving a factory installed mount to another arc..
does this seem right or not ?
thanks for any responses.
There is no official answer to this. I was wondering the same thing myself because I was working on a ship spreadsheet and the easiest way to handle the "buy" for the weapons was to refund the cost of the factory-installed mounts.
So the rules don't say, which leaves it to the GM
Build points, in the abstract, represent everything - constrol components, space, conduits, whatever - to have a thing in your ship. If you're not going to have a weapon in an arc, it makes sense to use those "points" elsewhere.
If I was the GM, I'd certainly allow moving a factory mount. I might be less flexible on removing them completely, or I might allow that too. It depends how exploitive it feels. I might allow them to be removed but only refund half the BP.
I'd allow moving weapons mounts between different arcs (can’t do much with the turret in this case), but not converting it into BP - those points would go over the allowed amount for the ship tier.
If you analyze the most popular starship in Starfinder, it starts with 14 BP worth of weapon mounts but its frame only costs 12 BP.
You pay 12 for the frame and also gains 14 in mounts.
Factory weapon mounts are just free money!
Thanks for the response I appreciate it.. Wingblaze , I too am writing a starship generator but its not a spreadsheet .It is an actual program that will generate an xml starship for fantasy grounds or a ship sheet. I think ill go with yours and Ragi suggestions by allowing moving an existing mount only ..
I'd say no to this at my table. If you could move a starting mount by selling it and buying it in a different arc, there would be no reason for the designers to have presented frames the way they had. They would have just said the frame has X number of mounts and let you allocate them where you wanted.
I'd say no to this at my table. If you could move a starting mount by selling it and buying it in a different arc, there would be no reason for the designers to have presented frames the way they had. They would have just said the frame has X number of mounts and let you allocate them where you wanted.
The best exploit I can imagine by moving around factory weapons mounts is to facilitate access to linked weapons, although you'll leave other arc(s) exposed.
But if the argument is for realism, yeah, makes no sense to mess around with factory settings. Just grab another frame that better suits your needs, the only thing it'll cost is your current ship.
Ravindork's interpretation is also valid (to me). It's a GM call.
If a player wanted to do it for a munchkin reason, I'd be disinclined, but it if was a minor tweak of, say, one mount because it made it better for their crew configuration, then whatever.
Minor side note: Just to be clear, the reason I did in my spreadsheet was because it was just easier/faster to set up. Working through the cost logic of existing mounts, upgraded weights, etc. looked messy. Refund and rebuy was simple as pie. I wasn't intending they would sell off factory mounts, and I even listed the frame defaults.
Mostly I wanted a sheet that would supply cheat sheets for the ship roles (with correct DCs) for the other players, and produce a clean ship character sheet for combat use. (Google docs is popular for this with good reason, but it's blocked from work for security reasons, so I went with Excel, which I know better anyway.) But I digress