There was a lot of discussion in this thread about distances for the probe droids and being able to natively get your lock with say, the 5 straight instead of the droid. That’s not really why you’re bringing the probe droid, especially if you don’t have Kraken (but even if you do.) You want your ESCs to be double modified, so you use the probe droid and the natural space your opponent will likely give the swarm to enable the locks, and you bank calculates with kraken (if you have it) and round of combat. If you brought, say, TA-175, then you will likely get double calculate with lock on each of your ships (other than the first killed) if you can pull it off.

Most lists aren’t going to rush into range 3 of a ESC swarm.

The worst part of Probe Droids, LRS and every other TL from beyond range 3 is that you need to make decision which ship to TL with each of your ships. Let's say you have 5-8 ships, and opponent has 2-8. There are so many combinations each time. It's like taking TL when your ship is in range but outside of combat but on large scale.

It's still a massive advantage for five points

Just wish I knew how feasible it was to reliably lock before engagement