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Let's say that a Ravagore uses Blight Blast (RNG 14, AOE 3) on a unit of Iron Fang Pikemen. We measure and the Pikemen are 15" away, so the attack automatically misses and deviates. Can it deviate and land further than 14"? The wording in the rules don't make a lick of sense to me but it seems like it's possible to purposely target something you don't have range to and hope for a deviation to hit it anyways?

Now let's say the same Ravagore is 6" away and uses Blight Blast. If the attack misses, then it can only deviate a maximum of 3" (half the distance to the target) in any direction, correct?

What if something had Gunfighter and was in 0.5" (i.e. non-Reach melee range) and used an AOE? Even if it missed, it will deviate virtually nothing (0.25")? In other words could you use an AOE that doesn't require a hit, for example, and drop it on high DEF low ARM models from point blank range to catch them regardless of your attack roll, assuming you had Gunfighter or something that let you make a ranged attack from within 0.5"?

Actually on that note, and maybe this should be a separate question, does the restriction on shooting while in range apply to YOUR melee range, or your opponent's? In other words, if I have a model that does not have reach that's within 2" of a model that does has reach, can I shoot it? It sounds like you can't, because you're being threatened (I imagine the opponent with the reach weapon is too close for comfort to risk shooting it), but I'm not sure how Gunfighter interacts with this if at all. If you have Gunfighter, could you shoot at a model that threatens you but you don't threaten? Reading Gunfighter it says it just gives you 0.5" melee range, so it sounds like you can't shoot that model with Reach from 2" away, but you can move up to 0.5" and shoot, which is confusing because it doesn't make sense that you can shoot from close up but not from far away?

Yes, the AoE can deviate farther than the launcher's maximum range. So you can fire at something out of range and hope to roll the right direction and distance. Don't forget that if the AoE misses then (usually) the POW of the attack is halved.

An Aoe can only deviate a maximun half of the distance between the shooter and the target or 6 inches whichever is less.

You still have to roll to directly hit your target even if the maximum deviation distance is such that the target would still be hit by the AoE. If you miss then you will only (usually) do half POW. As a side note you will probably hit yourself as well using the same POW as any other model under the template.

If you are engaged then you can not use a ranged weapon unless you have a special rule that says you can. If you have gunfighter then the range of the weapon (usually) is .5 inches. So, if you are engaged with a model with reach but you are more than .5 inches away you will have to move closer the the engaging model to shoot at it.

The reason that I use "usually" is that there are some AoEs that damage at a specific POW regardless of being hit or directly hit and some ranged attacks that are more than .5 inches.

You're right on all counts about the AOE deviations as far as I can see. It is quite common to "hail mary" AOE shots towards light troops, or troops with Stealth that would be missed automatically and hope to catch them with the deviation.

On the other point it's actually both. Models engaged (in the enemy's melee range) and a model engaging (that has an enemy in the range of its melee weapon) are all "in melee" (that's pointed out on page 51) and can't make ranged attacks.
Trying to make game rules "make sense" just leads to sadness. Your model obviously has to point its gun straight into the enemy's face to dare and shoot it, otherwise your model could be caught with its guard down and take a spear/axe/halberd/whatever the reach weapon is hit to the face

Got it thanks. Yeah, I should just stop trying to interpret the rules and just follow what they say, I guess it comes from having played 40k for so long I'm not used to games with solid rules still even though I've focused on Warmachine for a while now.