This is a game where gravity and momentum, to say nothing of relativistic effects or the third dimension, don't exist for spaceships. Getting exercised about the speed of light is, to be perfectly blunt, an unusual intrusion of physical reality into space combat. Aurora almost never lets that sort of thing get in the way of the sort of game it wants to be. I cannot at present think of any other instance of allowing physics to limit decisions made about game balance.
Even if Steve chooses to make an exception for and respect c, making weapon and fire control ranges match better can be done in at least two ways:
A. Reduce the ranges of beam weapons at all tech levels. I don't recommend this; the ratio of the distance ships can travel in a game tick and the range of beam weapons is already low.
B. Allow arbitrary beam ranges. Just have the beam pulse (a firing event) impact in following ticks. If we want to do this simply, we just save the beam pulse data, calculate its arrival time, and apply it then - don't worry about ship movement in the meantime. Later feature polishing could include adjustment of arrival time if ships move relative to each other. Dodging would not be allowed, or only allowed through a abstracted process.
Frankly, what this game *really* needs - perhaps in an Aurora II - is to get rid of the 5-second game pulse . However, this would pretty much require a complete coding overall, so this is pie in the sky for anyone other than a very determined Steve.