So the latest AP, Dawn of Flame #3, has a liquid substitute for UPBs called polyfluid and an item to convert manufactured tech items into polyfluid at 10% value. This has certain implications for what UPBs/polyfluid are and how they work. These aren't your granddad's reconfigurable nanobots, folks.
Polyfluid is a technological fluid unknown to the Pact Worlds until the PCs discover it. A PC who succeeds at a DC 19 Engineering, Mysticism, or Physical Science check realizes that this substance is essentially a liquid form of UPBs. It can be used in the same way as UPBs.
In a tech workshop, the PCs can use polyfluid to make siccatite to repair the Sun Diver. Any PC trained in Engineering or Mysticism realizes this possibility.
Polyfluid is worth 1,000 credits per 1 bulk, and 1 credit worth of polyfluid can be used in place of 1 UPB. It takes 625 credits worth of polyfluid to make 1 bulk of siccatite; the process takes 2 hours in a tech workshop per bulk produced.
So. 1 bulk of polyfluid/UPBs can make 1 bulk of siccatite, with .375 bulk left over for making other stuff. That's, uh, magical. Like literally. Whatever this stuff is doing, it's (1) generating or incorporting and converting from the environment extra mass and (2) able to configure itself (and possibly free environmental feedstocks) to be anything at all.
The comedy of how the same mass of UPBs is necessary to make a huge vehicle and a small pistol that cost the same was at least a little defensible when you imagined the small expensive items required you to create intermediary one time use tools to help build you final product, but the hilarity goes up considerably now that you can reverse the process.
Based on protocite reclaimers, this grinder has flat-toothed discs that interlock and rotate toward one another. A multistage mechanism allows these grinders to break material down into junk or polyfluid. The initial stage renders 1 bulk of technological items into 1 bulk of inert electronic equipment suitable as a target for some spells, such as battle junkbot. Further grinding produces polyfluid that flows into a swappable tank that itself weighs 1 bulk empty. Polyfluid can be gleaned from both analog and technological items. In any case, the material you produce is worth 10% of the original item’s value. The weight of the polyfluid produced is determined by that monetary value.
So if I feed a 1 bulk Azimuth Laser Rifle worth 425 credits to a Portable Grinder I get 42 credits worth of polyfluid, equivalent to .042 bulk. But if I feed it a 1 bulk Tempest Polarity Rifle, worth 1,000,000 credits I get 100,000 credits worth of polyfluid, equivalent to...100 bulk. Which is extruded over a minute, so I better have 100 swappable tanks ready to capture it all.
Yeah, Starfinder engineers are using some magic built into their basic materials and tech base, all right.
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Keep in mind that bulk is not just weight. It's also size and generic wieldyness/shape.
Heck, in the UPB entry they even say that when aligned 1000 UPBs can easily take up less bulk than the 1 from the raw form amount.
So while those 625 raw UPBs might have a bulk score of 6xL, after configuring them they could have a bulk score of L or even 10.
That said, I'm going with 100 UPB to have bulk L, anything below that is bulk - until you reach 100. This automatically makes 1000 raw UPB be bulk 1 and so on.
Yes, with high level costly items it becomes quite ridiculous with that grinder.
For me this is a case of: "How does it work?" "Very well, thank you."
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"How does it work?" "Very well, thank you."
And that's where I think I'll leave it.