Me and a friend threw down last Friday, and I had a moment I had to ask about - his fighter was almost exactly the distance of the "Are you in range" stick away. The only thing making contact between the two ships was the little nub of plastic where you put the maneuver template between. An 8th of an inch further away and the stick would have passed clean.

Would you have considered that in range to fire at each other?

(For the record, I gave it to him anwyay. We just laughed at the circumstances)

The nubs of bases do NOT count for measuring range/arc.

However, in every other case they do count. This includes (but is not limited to): overlapping another ship, overlapping an asteroid, proximity mines, seismic charges*, etc.

As for where my info comes from, the core book calls out the exception for measuring arc. Implying that they count for the rest, which was confirmed in an email from FFG, posted in one of these rules threads. As for the mines, that was called out in the FAQ...

*Note, when the seismic charges measure range 1, your ship base nubs don't count, but the charges' nubs DO count.

Ah! Good to know in the (extremely unlikely) event that this ever happens again. Mind you, he wound up missing so my giving it to him had no bearing on the eventual outcome of the game - but it's still good to know.