If you use a grid, the issue goes away.
Indeed it does. And that may well be the solution some gamers prefer.
But let us consider the ground scale and weapons to see the other side of the issue.
Most game rulesets used for 6mm WW2 or modern miniatures gaming on 1:1 unit scales (one model = one vehicle) suggest either a 1:1000 or 1:2000 ground scale. At 1:1000 one inch = approx 25 meters. At 1:2000 one inch = 50 meters.
How small do we want our grid to be? 12 inches? Less?
At 12 inches we are looking at a minimum resolution of 300 to 600 meters for our combat resolution. Make the grid finer, even all the way down to a 4 inch grid (~100mm), and we are still looking at 100m or 200m as our minimum resolution.
If I am working with infantry stands and trying to come up with a range band for thrown weapons or short-ranged weapons (like SMGs, or rifle grenades), a resolution of +/- 600m, 300m, 200m, or even 100m is a pretty tough pill to swallow. At least for those of us who want to see how our infantry fight progresses, rather than just to see how our die roles worked out.
Yes, I can understand the perspective that says "long range, short range, and close contact" as range bands. That works reasonably well for those who want to see how their game progresses without the details of how the combat takes place.
When you get down to ranged fire by the infantry, some gamers are perfectly content with a measuring resolution of +/- 100%. Others may prefer to have higher resolution than +/- 200m on range measurements when many of their weapons have an effective ranges of less than 200m.
I prefer to know that as a tank advances from a distance of 150m down to 50m it will make it's way into panzerfaust range (conversationally ~60m). With a grid my only information is that it is somewhere between 200-400m, or somewhere between 0-200m.
And measuring from the edge of stands vs the center of stands, when the ground scale is 1:2000, and the stands are larger than 20mm in size, might make a difference of 40m in my measured range to the target.
So it might not be a factor in some games, but I can certainly see how it is a factor in others.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)