ECM, EST, APA, HARM, and how they interact

[Club]

Rules Question

 

OK, the enemy has a CAV (A Kahn) with ECM protecting it. This irritates me, because I want to chain-fire it and it's squad-mates to death with 3 Raijin and a Thunderbird

 

My squad's final CAV, a Raptor has an external Phased Array, letting me get a target lock on the ECM'ing unit as a free action, and fire HARM missiles.

 

However, the Raptor also has EST. Since the Raptor has a target lock on the Kahn (From the APA) can the other units in the Terran squad use that lock-on through the EST? Or is the APA target-lock only good for the Raptor?

 

 

Love how you live and die by C3 and electronics in CAV.

[Jeneki]

Can External Active Phase Array be used to fire HARM?  External ECM specifically states it can only use the first ability (no jamming or HARM) so it would make sense that they both work the same way, however the way External APA is worded is a bit nebulous.

[Club]

OK then, can the custom CAV (That just happens to look a lot like a raptor) that has a phased targeting array and Electronic strike targeting pass on its target lock to the rest of the squad? Because I really want that Kahn dead.

 

From the way I read external APA in the book, it just grants the bonus; but the force builder program lets you put HARM on a cav after you put Ext-APA on, but not before. Bit of a contradiction there.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Club

[Jeneki]

Don't take my word for it; there's a reason I phrased that as a question hehe.

 

I only see one unit with both native Active Phase Array and Guided Missiles (Dragonfly), which seems oddly rare if that's how HARM missiles are intended to work.

[CAVBOSS]

The target lock from a model using their ECM or APA cannot be shared with EST as it is using the "radiation" being emitted by the target unit to lock on too with the actual HARM missile.

 

The external APA cannot be used to fire HARMs. It has limited options due to its design to be "added" on. The FM will need to have that fixed.

 

New models will be more set up to use these options as most of the existing models were based on their CAV2 designs.

[Club]

I think the rules would be clearer if you separate the current target lock into 'target lock' and 'missile lock'

 

Gain a target lock by either;

1) using the lock-on action

2) having a squadmate with EST that has used the lock-on action

 

Tag grants a missile lock on the targeted unit to all friendly units

a unit with ECM/APA and HARM missiles can, as a free action, gain a missile lock on any enemy unit using APA/ECM.

Any unit with a target lock also has a missile lock on the same unit.

missile locks are NOT passed on by EST except through target locks.

 

Anything I missed?

Edited September 30, 2016 by Club