Weapon Mounts

Missile cells Spinal mount on an Azhanti High Lighting class frontier cruiser from RPG Traveller As a general rule, a space warship is basically a "weapons platform." It is just a way to move some weapons that you control into a strategic position.
 * Weapon Turret

Single weapons and multi-weapon turrets are mounted on "hardpoints" or "weapon stations." These are positions on the spacecraft's hull that are designed to carry the mass of the weapon. One only hangs a heavy picture frame on a nail in a wall stud, not just the wall board. For the same reason only mount a heavy turret on a hardpoint, not on a flimsy stretch of hull. Some hulls are about as strong as the skin on a beer can.

Turrets pivot to allow aiming the weapon(s). Homing missiles are often mounted in "vertical launch systems" or "missile cells", because they do not have to be aimed. Fire and forget, they'll automatically find the target.

Naturally some people who are into hyper-optimization and min-maxing will quickly switch from mounting weapons on a ship to building the ship around a weapon. A monstrously huge weapon, with a fixed forward facing.

Of course you probably have to turn the entire spacecraft in order to aim the weapon, but the ship is going to smite the target with the most bang for your buck. It certainly will be the sort of ship that will blast the snot out of you if you are stupid enough to turn around and try running away. The ship will also have a similar outline as the weapon, probably long and skinny. Popular spinal mount weapons are coil guns, rail guns, and particle beam weapons, since those weapons inflict more damage the longer the weapon is.

The weapon can be mounted on the ship's nose, along the ship's side ("dorsally" or "ventrally", but RocketCat will rip your lips off if you use those terms), or along the ship's spine.

In extreme cases the weapon is the ship's spine, this is what the Traveller RPG calls a "spinal mount". A good example is the "Wave motion gun" that forms the spine of Space Battleship Yamato. In the real world the A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft is pretty much built around its 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type cannon. And Matthew Marden pointed out to me that in 1890 the USS Vesuvius was virtually a spinal mount, with "dynamite guns" fixed in both traverse and elevation