Beam Fire Control Maximum Range

[Adseria (OP)]

Beam fire controls seem to have a much shorter range than equivalent lasers. However, the details on range are a bit ambiguous; Is the maximum range (IE 4 times whatever base tech I've unlocked) a hard cap, or does it just mean that beam weapons will have lower accuracy at longer ranges than the "maximum range," like they have better accuracy at shorter range?

[JacenHan]

The number you get on the beam fire control design screen is the "50% accuracy" range; the maximum range (hard cap) is twice that. Beam weapons will be more accurate at shorter ranges and less accurate at long ranges. Lasers having longer ranges than fire controls is normal: late game lasers will be longer ranged than the best fire control in the game.

[Garfunkel]

There is no hard cap on BFC accuracy, it just gets degraded until it's 0% at which point your ships refuse to fire. Same thing can happen if enemy ECM degrades your accuracy. The tech you research is the distance for 50% chance to hit without any other modifiers and you can then over-engineer the BFC to quadruple size to extend the range. To improve the range and accuracy, you need to research the next level of fire control range and so on and so forth until you hit the highest tech level which is 175 000 km, which you can then quadruple in size for 4x increase in range.

[Adseria (OP)]

So, basically, my beam weapons can have a maximum range of anything up to 8x my current FC tech (4x for the increased-size FC, and 2x because max range is double 50% range), but anything more than that is wasted (aside from the increase in damage with larger focal size)?

For instance, say I have the 40,000km tech. That means that the maximum range for a default FC would be 80,000km, and for a maxed (4x) size FC, it would be 320,000 (but it would say would say "50% at 160,000km"). Is that right?

[Father Tim]

Maybe not.  An experienced crew gains a bonus to hit with beam weapons, and depending on where in the formula the addition and/or multiplication takes place, the "0% chance to hit" distance might move out.

The only absolute hard-coded limit I'm aware of is 5 light seconds.  Aurora will not let you shoot any sort of direct-fire weapon at a target beyond that distance.