Got this game as a free copy today at a local game store when I went to drop off free copies of my own game. Very nice! Andy and Kanyath you might like the NSR Cauldron discord if you aren’t already in it. Lots of like-minded creators there.
As far as the battlespace is concerned yes. Anything on the board can be shot. If for some reason I was running a battlespace with ships 30 bands apart perhaps I would say attacks are impaired but I can’t think of a scenario where that’d be necessary.