Heat Inducing Flare Burning AutoCannon Ammo

Heat Inducing Flare Burning AutoCannon Ammo, or HIFB AC Ammo for short, is a special ammunition that allows ACs to fire burning flare tracers.

Development
In an increasingly chaotic battlefield where rules dissolves and the Word of Blake revived total war, it was key to bring order and good chances of hitting your enemy. Clouds of smoke, nuclear mushrooms and night made it harder and harder to sucessfully attack in conventional battle. While Steiners just ordered artillery to blindfire at everything, the Capellan Confederation coudn't afford such wanton waste of resources. Adapting technology gained from the Word of Blake itself, they created a type of AutoCannon ammo able to let them enhance target acquisition. As a bonus, its high-powered flares were also able to burn the targets, thus positively synergizing with the Confederation's increasingly common Plasma Weaponry.

Rules
HIFB AC Ammo exists for all types of AC that allow alternate ammunition, in all sizes (2,5,10,20, etc). It has half the shots as normal AC ammo for that type, rounding .5 up.

Heat Inducing Flare Burning AutoCannon Ammo is fired on the offboard attack phase, just like TAG. A 'Mech firing an AC at this phase can't fire it in the normal firing phase of that turn. This firing is unique; you can't fire additional times the same AC in the same turn, even if rules for normal ammo would allow it.

HIFB ammo deals half its AC rating, rounded up, as heat damage to the target (1 heat for AC/2, 3 heat for AC/5, 5 heat for AC/10, 10 heat for AC/20, and so on). If the target does not track heat, it deals that much damage to it instead. This replaces the normal damage dealing.

In addition, all weapons fired in the weapons fire round of that turn, that target a unit sucessfully hit target with HIFB ammo, gain a +1 bonus to their to-hit roll, or +2 if its night or the target is behind smoke. This HIFB bonus only stacks to a maximum of +2 in any case.