Unladen long-range spaceships taking off (4)
I believe the answer is:
less
'off' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'unladen long-range spaceships' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'long' could be 'l' and 'l' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'ess' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'taking' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for less that I've seen before include "Fewer in number" , "inferior" , "A smaller amount" , "Fewer; minus" , "Comparatively little" .)