p 62 has a somewhat cryptic line:
"A weapon mounted in the robot’s torso may use any available Slots."
What does this actually mean? (It feels like maybe something got changed in editing.)
As far as I can tell from the example StarTek robot, the rules as intended are:
1. Installing a weapons mount
always takes up slots. It's exactly the same as any other equipment that takes up slots.
2. If a manipulator is large enough, you can declare that the weapon mount is incorporated into the arm, rather than sticking out of the robot. That doesn't change rule 1.
Basically with RAI, that sentence I flagged seems extraneous - the rules don't really comment on installing items in the torso anywhere else, it's just slots expended.)
Side questions related to weapon mounts (more to spawn future discussion, since the book is baked at this point):
The book as written has options for concealing the entire robot, but not individual pieces of equipment. Is installed equipment always obvious? If an item is concealed, is that free or should it cost slots/money? While that's an interesting question for almost all equipment, it's particularly appropriate when thinking about weapons.
Rules as Written would probably say that it's effectively handwaved / up to the GM, since I don't think it's discussed anywhere. But it's not hard to propose some optional rules...
The vehicle rules have a "pop up" concealment mount, which takes up as much space as the weapon mount itself. It seems like there should be a difference between designing an obvious warbot with a giant vehicle cannon and a huge trashbot that has a cannon concealed inside it for when the revolution starts.
So this would be an easy rule of weapon mounts.
Because of all the vehicle rules for different weapon mounts, it's also worth asking what torso-mounted weapon really looks like? Is that effectively a fixed mount, a 360 degree turret, or something different? (Possibly handwaved at this level of detail.)
Random noodling:
- A turret could be modeled as a high DEX manipulator, to improve the accuracy of the weapon. Possibly cheaper, since it's not actually capable of manipulating other things.
- A 'fixed weapon' mount variant could use less space but give the robot a significant DEX penalty when firing the weapon because the robot has to effectively aim itself to fire. (The penalty could be worse for larger bots. Maybe TrashBot isn't really meant to shoot people with that cannon.)
Anyway that's me randomly noodling, while I design the bots that will free robots from Imperial slavery.