Circles in general denote either range or size - i.e. how far something can fire/project a weapon or ability, so how big something is (i.e. structure) etc...

Scary; that  would make missile barrage look like a parlour trick...

Anyways, when you highlight a skill icon, a purple circle will appear showing you the range of that skill.  Useful information, particularly for abilities like the mothership's shield regeneration.

I think the magneticCloud ability is a AOE, as it lists -1 (all) for number of targets and gives a range value (that can be changed of course)    It affects all ship abilities, shutting them down. It has a finish condition of leaving the grav-well. I've tried adjusting it to a time limit, like 120 seconds, but get crashes in Entrenchment, but didn't in the old pre 1.12 days. Perhaps too much internally has changed in Entrenchment? Or perhaps its because of beta and not final, dont know.

But drop that into a ship and toggle auto-fire, and that is an Awesome Weapon!!   

I thought of making the range like 50,000 to cover the whole well.     Haha, but then decided it was too OP!

-Teal

edit:  Oh... yes, of course you have to set it to "Enemy" instead of none or it will shut down your own ships as well as the enemy!  Haha, that was really crazy when that happened to me!