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[Postumus]

I have seen this idea floated around in a couple posts, but I haven't seen a thread on it in the Suggestions. So - since NARC, as of right now, does exactly the same thing that TAG does, why not also allow the NARC beacon to cancel the ECM disruption effect on the Mech hit with the beacon? One of the things that has people so riled up about ECM is that countering it with TAG is freaking hard and annoying. Because the effect from TAG does not linger, any little movement that takes the tag laser off the targeted mech will cause a loss of missile lock. If the target is moving, even in the open, this often means that the period where ECM is disrupted is less that the necessary time to lock, release a volley, and hit. Because target lock is needed until the missiles hit, disrupting this process at any point basically stops it dead.

With the 20 second change to the NARC beacon, if it were made to counter ECM, it would allow enough time for about two, maybe 3 LRM volleys. I feel that this would be fairly balanced, for the following reasons:

1. It affects only the mech with a beacon placed on it, like TAG

2. Although the period of the effect would be longer than TAG, and would not require continued line of sight, it is commensurately harder to get a beacon on the desired mech, involving the risk of exposing yourself to close range enemy fire.

3. The period of the effect would probably not be long enough to guarantee a kill on the affected mech, unless you have an entire lance of missile boats and the targeted mech just sits and takes it.

4. It would make light, ECM carrying mechs think twice about charging into the midst of the main enemy force, as they often do now with little repercussion because of invulnerability to streaks and lagshield.

Possible issues that would be created by this change:

1. Streak cats with one NARC tube. Chase down the Raven, NARC, PWN, rinse, repeat. This would kind of defeat the purpose of ECM's effect on streaks. This could be avoided by either making the NARC beacon work only for LRMs, or by some restriction on carrying both streaks and a NARC pod.

2. Lagshielded light mechs running through the enemy line and NARCing multiple mechs, negating the effect of ECM on anything they could shoot. This could be avoided by making the NARC beacon affect ECM on only the last mech it was placed on, or on a limited total, like 2 mechs. This is also kind of mitigated by the fact that LRMs are most effective when their fire is focused, as opposed to hitting each mech once.

Let me know what you think of this proposal.