Dead-Fire Missiles

Dead-Fire Missiles were prototype weapons developed by the Draconis Combine to offset the increasing cost of military hardware. To reduce cost, the guidance systems of standard long range and short range missiles were removed and replaced with larger warheads. Though this obviously increased the damage the missiles inflicted, the lack of guidance made the systems very difficult to use. These systems existed for only a brief time before being superseded by Medium Range Missile launchers.

Manufacturers
The Dead-Fire Missile is manufactured on following planets:

Tactical Handbook version
Any standard LRM or SRM launcher could be loaded with Dead Fire Missiles. These missiles would inflict one extra point of damage (2 points per LRM, 3 per SRM) but when using the cluster hits table, the controlling player rolled 3D6 and used the two worst rolls to determine the number of missiles that hit.

When a launcher loaded with Dead Fire Missiles is hit by weapons fire, in addition to the launcher being destroyed, the missiles loaded in the rack explode and inflict more damage on the internal structure. The damage inflicted is equal to the number of missiles multiplied by their damage rating. An LRM-15 loaded with Dead Fire Missiles would inflict 30 points of damage for example.

Interstellar Operations version
The rules for Dead Fire missiles are largely similar to the Handbook version mentioned above. However, instead of rolling 3 dice to determine the cluster hit roll, the firer will roll as normal, but with a -3 to the cluster hit roll. If that roll goes below 1, then only a single missile hits. The missiles also lose one tile of range from each of their respective range brackets.