When loading a saved ship, there doesn’t appear to be a check on the soft-points to see if a weapon is present. This allows a person to edit the ship save file to place as many weapons as wanted on any ship. These weapons mounted outside of hard points appear to function correctly, even in challenge mode.
I had originally noticed this in the previous version, when it was reordering modules on non-full ships during a save. Some of the weapons were being moved from hard points to soft points, letting me put new weapons in the now vacant hard point slots.
Upon a little further testing, there is a lot which isn’t checked when loading. Power and crew requirements only seem to be checked as a precondition to saving. After a ship has been saved, you appear to be able to use it without problem, even if it doesn’t meet the requirements. I was able to field ships without any generators or crew.
Similarly, it does not appear to be checked whether or not equipment is of the correct type for the ship in question. I was able to put cruiser equipment on a fighter, and use have the fighter function without problem.
I made a challenge with the bugged out fighters called “Bugged Fighter Test 2 - Fighters With Cruiser Equipment”