Before the towering, gargantuan masses of my other ships came to be, the Navies venturing into space used significantly smaller, tentative spaceships, the height of technology at the time, but sorely outdated by the present day of my other works. Of course, space combat was a new thing back then, and officers were uncertain of the best tactical formations. They reasoned that fighting would be done close-in, to maximise accuracy across the wide expanse of space, as a shell off-target by a mere fraction of a degree would miss at long range. The were also acutely aware of the fact that ships could be vulnerable from below and above.

What developed was a rather old tactic, of simply keeping long lines of ships, end to end, to face each other across space. To prevent being outmanoeuvred from above or below, the main 'Battle Line' would have one or two 'Support Lines' above or below them to deter the enemy.

Without realising it however, this strrategy negated the idea of 'short range' close-in fighting in a Nelsonian style. Soon, intrasolar wars showed that the tactic of two or three battle lines simply presented the enemy lots of targets close-together, allowing for the enemy to fire inaccurate, but equally dangerous weapons. This developed the battleship from a short range vessel in a straight line, into the more spaced formations and phenomenally long gun barrels of the modern Space Age.

Note that the 'range' of a weapon in space refers to it's speed. A 'short' range weapon is fired slower, as the barrel, being the coil accelerator, is shorter. If this projectile is fired over a long distance, yes, it will eventually reach a long distance, but the target will be long gone.

The 'long' range weapon is faster, as the coil accelerator in the barrel is longer. This projectile's speed means that it can feasibly hit a target over a long distance. Both these types of projectiles have computers predicting where the enemy will be, and plotting a firing solution. However, shorter range weapons give the enemy time to react, and change course, thus avoiding the shell. Both long and short range weapons fire so fast anyway, that it would be impractical to fit any sort of microthruster onto them to make them a homing projectile, as the microthruster could not significantly change the shell's course.