Rupert Boleyn (31 Jan 2023 22:53 UTC) wrote:

>     Christopher Sean Hilton - chris at vindaloo.com wrote:

>     > Assuming that factor "A" weapons are available an any tech above their introduction, the
>     > second question is actually pretty simple to answer but can you procure a factor "A" meson
>     > gun when you are building at TL14?

Don't see why not. The other way around (installing a higher-tech weapon in a lower-base-tech ship) I think I would make problematic, for game-play reasons. As someone else mentioned, access to a higher-tech version might be a problem, plus interface problems: the targeting computers wouldn't work quite right, etc, etc. But that's sort of hand-wavy.

>     I see no reason why you can't install a lower power and lower TL spinal
>     weapon if you want. I don't think there's ever an optimisation reason to
>     do so, but I don't see why you couldn't if there was some in-universe
>     reason to.

IMTU it's common for a Navy to sell on its ships to friendly powers, once technology has moved on enough that these older models are no longer front-line capable (say, 50/100/150 years after they were built, depending on your TL and rate-of-change of this). At this time it would be equally common for a tech-level-X systems, could be engine, Jump drive, weapon system, computer, whatnot, to be deliberately replaced with a downgraded model, to a point where the ship as a whole is no longer a great threat to the seller. This may happen multiple times. Of course, volume, maintenance, power consumption, staffing levels, and so on, may all become issues :-)

Outside the world of the serious military, it's easy to posit a case where some ship system breaks on some world where it's unfixable, but the local shipyard can somehow shoe-horn in a lower-tech replacement. Potential issues with this can me left to the local GM's febrile imagination :-)

Jonathan