So I was playing a game not too long ago where 40k barrage weapon rules were called into question and I was thrown that there was even an opposing interpretation to the one that I had always played with, so I'm asking now to see what the community consensus is.
The way that I understood it, barrage weapons could use the barrage rules to fire indirectly, using the multiple barrage flip rule and center-of-blast wound allocation and reducing by ballistic skill only if they could see their target, OR, they could fire directly, just like any other normal blast weapon, and roll to hit for each blast and allocate wounds from the firing model. This made sense to me for barrage weapons with minimum ranges; they couldn't arc the shell within that minimum range and were forced to lower the guns to fire in a straight line instead.
However, an opposing interpretation is that firing directly or indirectly is all a matter of being able to see your target or not, if you can see, it's direct fire and you reduce by your BS, or it's indirect and you can still shoot but without reducing the scatter. Either way, you still used all of the barrage weapon rules. Thus, the minimum range meant that you can only shoot your target if you can see your target, but your basilisks were still arcing the shells at point blank range no problem. This made less sense to me, but my fellow 40kers seemed sure of this ruling. What am I to make of this?