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But I think we could use Narc as a stepping stone for even more interesting information warfare tools (and other stuff). Narc is a good platform for "special abiltiies" since it's relatively heavy at 3 tons for the launcher and 1 ton for 12 shots of ammo. It's not inexpensive component of your build, so you have to take care in what you select.
Biggest problem of course is - alternate ammo/ammo selector technology is not there yet.
Alternate NARC ammo suggestions:
Smoke Missile
The main idea here is to pretty much block sight inside the smoke, making it difficult to anyone inside the smoke to fight and for anyone to attack anyone inside the smoke.
Example Mechanics:
The smoke missile explodes at the target location and produces dense smoke in a 180m radius area. The smoke spreads over approximately 5 seconds and lasts another 5 seconds before it disperses over 5 seconds. Visibility and targeting is limited to around 90m. This is designed to really hinder enemy mechs inside the smoke, and can be used even at long range to block sight of enemy mechs and force them to change position or wait out the smoke.
Fog Missile
The main difference to the smoke idea is that you can still see a bit further inside the smoke, allowing you to theoretically engage in brawling while in the smoke, but making it inefffective to fire out of the fog or into the fog.
Example Mechanics:
This is similar to the smoke grenade, but the effect is much less dense, instead occupying a larger radius (~400m). The fog spreads to its maximum range over 5 seconds and lasts for about 10 seconds before it dissipates over 5 seconds.
Visibility and targeting inside the fog is limited to around 200m. This makes this fog useful for defensive and offensive purposes - enemies far away cannot effectively see targets, but mechs inside the fog still can see and target each other.
HEAP Missile
This turns the Narc launcher in a more or less conventional weapon system.
Example Mechanic:
A single Narc missile deals 8 damage. (less than an SRM6, but no spread and better range and speed!)
Inferno Missile
The Narc launcher fires an Inferno missiles that can heat up the target.
Example Mechanics:
The missile inflicts 8 heat to the target (but, like Flamers, can't raise a mech's heat beyond 90 %).
Don't get too focused on the mechanical specifics, the main idea of each ammo type is what is important, the rest is probably something that PGI would have to tweak anyway.
