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So here's the situation: You're running around in your Atlas AS7-D-DC, getting all up close and personal in everyone's face with your trusty AC/20 and twin SRM6s. But considering you're 80m away from your enemy and aren't going to move out of that distance very quickly, back into your maximum damage potential zone (within the 180m-270m range, where all of your weapons are effective on the target).
So your LRM 10 sits there and you can't do anything with it until you defeat your enemy or break lock and move on to another. It sits, waiting for its ammo to explode or you to lose your torso and in doing so lose a lot of your firepower that you (may have) never used in the first place. Sad day.
What I'd like to propose is an enhancement not to LRMs themselves, but to the TAG and NARC weapons. Currently, TAG gives a bonus to missile targeting strength, locking speed, lock retention. The NARC does the same, but doesn't require LOS. Regardless, I would like to see that if you are engaged in a fight with a mech and your current radar selected target is closer than the 180m minimum distance, but another enemy mech is being tagged by an ally, within 1000m maximum range, and in an acceptable firing arc (no shooting missiles at enemies behind you), that a secondary target tone would sound in the cockpit and the missiles would default track to whatever enemy mech is being spotted at the time.
For balance (which I'm obviously not an expert on) I'd recommend that this secondary target function work exclusively for Artemis IV equipped LRM launchers, and that the missiles would NOT receive any targeting bonus (either from NARCs, TAGs, or the Artemis itself) en route to a second target. I've noticed that the Artemis IV system is considered far more valuable for SRMs than LRMs, where it is considered to be mostly a waste of tonnage.
Target decay for the secondary target should be instantaneous. If the NARC beacon expires or the TAG laser is taken off target before the missiles arrive, they will simply go to the last place they were designated to, functioning the same as current launchers.
Now I know we all hate being on teams where the enemy has a great TAGer and everyone gets rained on by 200 LRMs at a time, and because of that hatred this idea may hold very unpopular with the community. I imagine it would not be a simple feature to code, but personally I think it would be a fun addition to the game, and it would help prevent those matches where you get to the end with a full 100 shots of LRMs left because you simply never got a good opportunity to use them. It has the potential to bring the Artemis IV system onto more LRM boats as well. At the very least, it should make it a more attractive option to LRM boats.
Anyway, topic is open for discussion. Feel free to love it or hate it. I also apologize in advance if this has come up often before. I did a quick search using the search function and didn't see anything quite related to the subject, but I'll admit it was a brief search.
Edited by ExAstra, 05 July 2014 - 06:06 AM.
