Battlespace is a cool game, but in my opinion, its weapons system is slightly flawed. Naval weapons, while being much more powerful than standard anti-fighter weapons (which correspond directly to the weapons available in regular Battletech and Aerotech), are also much, much larger, and less efficient (sometimes by a factor of 100). Thus, the intelligent (or munchy, to some) warship designer stocks his or her ship with loads of conventional weapons. This is clearly not in the spirit of the game.
To compensate, I propose the following rules changes:
First, change the range system. Keep everything the same for naval weapons, but give conventional weapons a range of 0 - that is, they can only shoot at targets in their own hex.
Second, adjust the to-hit numbers of conventional weapons to compensate for their varying ranges. For the purposes of this simplification, weapons with short range use the long range base to-hit number. Weapons with medium range use the medium range base to-hit number, and weapons with long range use the short range base to-hit number. Weapons with extreme range use the short range base to-hit number with a -2 modifier, and point defense weapons use the short range base to-hit number when shooting at missiles.
Note that this second change does go back to the Aerotech and Battletech weapons range/to-hit number paradigm, where bigger weapons have longer short ranges, etc. I do not feel that this is necessarily bad, in this usage, and I feel that it is necessary to compensate for the greater efficiency of small weapons. This way, it is still beneficial to have long-ranged conventional weapons (and really, it isn't that unrealistic; the weapons with longer ranges will logically have more chances to fire and thus a greater probability of hitting.)
These two changes do have large effects that are positive, in my opinion. Naval missiles become sensible choices for anti-fighter weaponry again, and warships are actually more powerful than dropships. Most of the book-designed warships still have too little anti-fighter weaponry, but that is a design issue, not a rules issue. Logically, warships' weaponry should far outrange fighters', or else there wouldn't be any point in making warships. With these rules, there is a point to making warships.
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