Difference between revisions of "NARC"

Revision as of 14:04, 25 April 2020

NARC Missile Beacon

NARC, or Narc Missile Beacon, is a missile homing beacon that guides friendly missiles to the target.

Overview

Upon striking the target vehicle, NARC acts as a missile guidance beacon for 25 seconds. While the NARC missile itself does no damage, when successfully "stuck" to a target, the NARC will begin broadcasting; in-range friendly vehicles will receive a notification that a NARC is active, and any friendly guidable missiles will automatically home in on the beacon once they get within 1000 meters of the beacon, provided they were launched with active radar. NARC beacons will also override a TAG laser if both are active at once.

NARC missiles are very bulky, sharply limiting the number of extra NARC missiles a vehicle can carry.

Weapon Stats

Gameplay & Hints

There's two major ways to counter NARCs:

1. NARC beacons can not succesfuly broadcast from units under the protection of an AECM field, and every beacon fired at such a unit will not be able to activate. Already active beacons that come under the influence of a hostile AECM will deactivate and stop broadcasting until they leave the field again or their timer runs out.

2. Any EMP effect, like the one applied by PPCs of all sizes will remove NARCs, as long as the EMP splash reaches the core of the NARCed unit (Mech center torso, Tank Hull, etc). With this it is possible to remove a NARC from a friendly unit, or from yourself, by firing a PPC to near environment (wall for example) or direcly to component. Just hitting mechs foot won't usually help, because the EMP splash won't reach the CT.

The other source of EMP are critical fusion reactor explosions.

Canon

Causing quite a stir when it was introduced in 2587, the Narc system offered a radically different way of improve missile target acquisition. The culmination of project TATTLETALE by the Terran Hegemony, the Narc launcher fires a short-range missile whose explosive warhead was replaced with a special Homing Pod mounted behind a magnetic head. These pods broadcast a wide-range electromagnetic beacon, one which can be tracked by SRMs and LRMs whose guidance systems have been modified to home in on the signal. The end result is vastly improved accuracy against targets marked with a Narc beacon.

BattleTech reference

Usage

The following assets equip NARCs: