Forgive the scifi-speak, but I really need folks to straighten me out here. The first few times this happened, I thought I was just imagining things, but...

It really seems like ship range has no meaning in this build. The first thing I remember noticing was just a scout ship that I keyboard-moved across its range boundary line. NBD b/c mistook it for a part of the DL system that means some ships on auto-pilot will spend part of at turn beyond their legal range, even if you couldn't send them there as a final destination.

So I've futzed around a bit as I kept playing, and suddenly thought "Why not try to send a freighter to the other side of the (gigantic) galaxy when you are a long way from fat life support tech?" It seems to be working, at least according to my minimap.

p.s. I could post a screencap showing the both the freigter route line and the way-out-of-bounds location of my auto-surveying flagship, but I haven't had time to figure out why the Insert Image button yields such a cryptic set of boxes.