Sharg, on 15 January 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:
Can I suggest an alternative solution? Remove the 100% hit rate, but guarantee that at least 1 missile will hit from each volley.
I think a lot of people, including PGI, misunderstand how Streaks worked in the original table top game. Streak SRMs had two mechanics:
1) Streaks did not guarantee that every missile in the volley would hit, but only that at least 1 missile would hit, since the missile hit table had a 1 missile minimum.
2) Streak launchers also conserved ammunition by preventing you from firing until you had a lock.
With these two mechanics combined, you can see Streak SRMs' real benefit: Every time you expend ammunition, you are guaranteed to do at least some damage, but not necessarily full damage.
The above-quoted post is only half-right.
- "A player attempting to lock a Streak missile on target must make a standard to-hit roll during the Weapon Attack Phase as if he were firing a standard SRM. If successful, the player immediately fires his Streak SRM at the locked-on target. All Streak missiles automatically hit (no roll on the Cluster Hits Table is required), and the player rolls as normal to determine the hit locations. If the roll fails, the player does not achieve a lock and so does not fire the SRMs or build up any heat. The player must roll for a targeting lock each turn, even if he achieved a lock in the previous turn. The player must make a separate to-hit roll for each individual Streak system being fired." (Total Warfare, pg. 138)
- "...while a Streak SRM launcher applies the damage from each missile to a separate location, it does not apply its damage using the Cluster Hits Table; if the to-hit roll succeeds, all the missiles strike the target." (Total Warfare, pg. 116)
- "Developed as a means of conserving ammunition, the Streak system literally refuses to fire unless all of the launcher’s tubes simultaneously achieve a “hard lock” on their target." (TechManual, pg. 230)
Under normal operations, using the Streak system has exactly two outcomes:
- the launcher achieves the necessary "hard lock" (in TT terms: the to-hit roll succeeds) and all missiles fire (expending ammo and generating heat in the process), in which case they are guaranteed to strike the target somewhere (in TT terms, the player does not need to consult the Cluster Hits Table to determine if the missiles hit, but they still need to consult the Hit Location Table to see where the missiles hit)
- the launcher fails to achieve the necessary "hard lock" (in TT terms: the to-hit roll fails), in which case none of the missiles fire (with no ammo expended and no heat generated)
The exception to this occurs when,
and only when, the Streaks are used against a target within a hostile Angel ECM (not
Guardian, but
Angel) field, in which case, using the Streak system has exactly two outcomes:
- the launcher fails to achieve the necessary "hard lock" (in TT terms: the to-hit roll fails), in which case none of the missiles fire (with no ammo expended and no heat generated)
- the launcher achieves the necessary "hard lock" (in TT terms: the to-hit roll succeeds), and "on a successful Streak launcher attack, the attacker must roll on the Cluster table as though the launcher were a standard (non-Streak) model" (Tactical Operations, pg. 279)
By contrast,
Guardian doesn't change the way that Streaks work, but it does make it substantially more difficult to get the required "hard lock" in the first place by interfering with the sensors that would feed the information to the targeting system (in TT terms: it imparts a +5 penalty to the Sensor Detection Roll (with 2D6) described on pages 222-224 of
Tactical Operations; the penalty is added to the outcome of the roll, and an end-result of 9 or more means that the sensors of the would-be attacker completely fail to pick up the would-be target (that is, the ECM-carrier)).
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