Just a bit of oddball nonsense: Line of Sight rules for spacecraft...

[Liam's Ghost]

Just in case people are telling you warships aren't sufficiently terrifying.

The basic premise: Shots fired in space don't stop. There are actually rules in tactical operations that cover something like this, called the line of sight firing rules, where you are able to fire beyond your weapon's listed range, with severe penalties.

So let's port it over to spaceships!

Caveats:
1)Space is BIG. Like a whole Douglass Adams rant about how huge it is. Beyond a certain point, the shell simply isn't moving fast enough to aim it at the target accurately (the target will have moved to an unpredictable position).
2)Limiting to on the mapsheet firing like the standard ground rules doesn't necessarily apply, since there's no terrain or horizon to get behind at some point.

With both of these cases in mind, what we essentially have is offboard fire for warships, limited only by their ability to actually hit the target. So what we really need to do is set the maximum range.

For ballistic weapons (both standard and capital) I will arbitrarily set that range as twice its standard range increment, on the assumption that the shot is moving fast enough to have some chance of hitting its target at that distance.

For naval missiles, I'm going to point at the bearing-only missile rules we already have. For standard missiles, I'm just going to say see ballistic weapons above.

For energy weapons... well, this is probably why you shouldn't do this. Even assuming that part of the firing procedure is charging up a capacitor prior to discharging, imposing a delay, the beam is still moving at or close to the speed of light. So the maximum range is arbitrarily set at around one light second of distance, or 16,000 space hexes.

(note for planetary bombardment. A stationary target like a planet can be fired at from any range, because it moves in a predictable pattern, so orbital bombardment can be conducted at any range, just using the +8 modifier if outside of the weapon's normal range)

Firing at line of sight range applies a +8 modifier. This can be reduced by bracketing fire.

Your black lion is weeping now.

Anyway, just an idle thought while making dinner. You probably don't want to use this rule option.

[Daryk]

Don't forget to reduce the damage at those ranges.  While there's no atmosphere, the inverse square law will still assert itself eventually.

[Maingunnery]

What about historical shots? Weapons fire from centuries ago that orbit the local star or are inbound from another star system.

[Liam's Ghost]

Don't forget to reduce the damage at those ranges.  While there's no atmosphere, the inverse square law will still assert itself eventually.

That might help tone down the energy weapons to a degree. The idea of a McKenna bracket firing its main battery from nearly three hundred thousand kilometers away is still terrifying though.

What about historical shots? Weapons fire from centuries ago that orbit the local star or are inbound from another star system.

I think the odds of one of those shots intersecting with an inhabited planet are pretty unlikely. Though it might be a hilarious mystery story if one day a city just got flattened from orbit and nobody knew how or why.

[Alsadius]

Don't forget to reduce the damage at those ranges.  While there's no atmosphere, the inverse square law will still assert itself eventually.

Only for energy weapons. A Gauss slug will do just as much damage at long range as it does at short range - it would only decrease due to drag, which there isn't any meaningful amount of in space.

[Daemion]

Only for energy weapons. A Gauss slug will do just as much damage at long range as it does at short range - it would only decrease due to drag, which there isn't any meaningful amount of in space.

That sounds like a caveat for one-projectile weapons.  With autocannons, which are nebulously multi-shot (with a suggested few being single) the recoil will spread the shot grouping in the same way as beam weapons.