I've made a change to how ship combat is carried out. This is a change I intended to make, and feedback suggests it would be good to do this now. The altered text is below. Note that range now provides bonus or penalties to hit. Technical Skill is used for space combat, and Technical Officers use this skill as if it were Primary in combat. Technical enlisted men lready have Technical Skill as Primary, though also note that their skill progression is different.
Ship-to-Ship Combat
Ship combat is similar to personal combat. The attacker must roll his skill or lower on 1d20 to hit, accounting for adjustments for range as indicated below. A roll of 20 on 1d20 is always a miss. Fire Control Officers operate as if the Technical Skill is a primary skill (effectively +3 to hit) in ship combat rolls. It is assumed that all ships presented in this game have some kind of protective plating, and this is accounted for in the range and adjustments. The SM may devise alien ships that present armor adjustments for additional penalties to hit. However, these should generally be low adjustments since most weapons are energy-based and shields are most effective in these cases.
//////////////////////Range (miles)
Skill Adj. / Beams / Ion Torpedoes / Fireballs
+4 / 15,000 / 5,000 / 10,000
+3 / 30,000 / 10,000 / 20,000
+2 / 50,000 / 20,000 / 40,000
+1 / 75,000 / 30,000 / 60,000
0 / 100,000 / 40,000 / 80,000
0 / 125,000 / 50,000 / 100,000
0 / 150,000 / 60,000 / 120,000
-1 / 175,000 / 70,000 / 140,000
-2 / 200,000 / 80,000 / 160,000
-3 / 225,000 / 90,000 / 180,000
-4 / 250,000 / 115,000 / 230,000
-5 / 275,000 / 140,000 / 275,000
-6 / 300,000 / 165,000 / 300,000
-7 / 325,000 / 190,000 / 325,000
-8 / 350,000 / 210,000 / 350,000
-9 / 400,000 / 225,000 / 400,000
EDIT: a roll of 20 is always a miss (since we are rolling skill or lower on 1d20)
EDIT roll skill or lower to hit