Seeing this quote from Incarnate:

"Generally, when we increase the firing range, we decrease the firing rate, to maintain the same total count of in-flight objects and the scale of the "potentially collidable set". But, I'm guessing you probably don't want that. It would dramatically reduce the utility of the weapons at shorter ranges."

it occurs to me that it could be really fantastic and probably more closely address the issues of server/client loads vs weapon range/rate if we instead made those weapons fire rate vary.

Suggestion:
Extension of some turret weapons effective range at the cost of fire rate using a variable algorithm. Each weapon will use a "variable factor" per weapon that is different according to the intended functionality vs potential server load. This also will allow for tweaking using a single number. Perhaps that number or some representation of it could be in the weapons description down the road.

Example:
Gatling cannon fires every .1 seconds within 300m but decreases it's fire rate as the target moves out of this range say at 1000m it is firing only once per second.. this is just an example and those numbers aren't well thought out, but meant to show the point.

Application advantages:
1. Adjustable scale of "potentially collidable sets" per weapon.
2. Freedom to increase/decrease weapon ranges without concern for server load.

Role Play:
Auto targeting systems require more time to calculate accurate firing trajectories at greater distances.