Some reasons why smoke often fails

[Bulletpoint]

1: Smoke mission mortars for some reason fire much more slowly than HE-missions. Maybe the idea is keeping fresh smoke coming in, to maintain smoke cover for as long as possible?

2: Slow deployment of smoke means most of the smoke cover has already gone when all shells have been delivered. So waiting for smoke to fully deploy also means not having a lot of time to use it.

3: Drifting smoke stays at the altitude it was deployed. Often units simply fire under the smoke. Not sure if this is realistic, or if white phosphorous smoke hugs the ground in real life.

4: When doing fire missions in a line, many of the shells for some reason hit almost the exact same spot. Every smoke shell hitting an already smoked place is essentially wasted - apart from prolonging smoke cover at that spot for a few seconds. I think this is maybe because the game puts clusters of shells along the line, instead of spreading them out evenly.

So, how to use it? I find smoke only works when screening a very small and well-defined area. Anything larger than a 100 metre line is not very effective, depending on how many guns or mortars you have. Maybe a rule of thumb would be 50 metres for every smoke launcher.

[Bulletpoint]

Oh, and now we're at it - how come smoke shells leave craters?

[Warts 'n' all]

Oh, and now we're at it - how come smoke shells leave craters?

Because they are made of metal and are travelling at speed. In that regard, they are just like any object falling to earth. I think you'll find that the "crater" is a fair bit smaller and shallower than those created by other artillery rounds.

[Sailor Malan2]

1: Smoke mission mortars for some reason fire much more slowly than HE-missions. Maybe the idea is keeping fresh smoke coming in, to maintain smoke cover for as long as possible?

2: Slow deployment of smoke means most of the smoke cover has already gone when all shells have been delivered. So waiting for smoke to fully deploy also means not having a lot of time to use it.

3: Drifting smoke stays at the altitude it was deployed. Often units simply fire under the smoke. Not sure if this is realistic, or if white phosphorous smoke hugs the ground in real life.

4: When doing fire missions in a line, many of the shells for some reason hit almost the exact same spot. Every smoke shell hitting an already smoked place is essentially wasted - apart from prolonging smoke cover at that spot for a few seconds. I think this is maybe because the game puts clusters of shells along the line, instead of spreading them out evenly.

So, how to use it? I find smoke only works when screening a very small and well-defined area. Anything larger than a 100 metre line is not very effective, depending on how many guns or mortars you have. Maybe a rule of thumb would be 50 metres for every smoke launcher.

I have never had an issue on smoke. It does need to be slow, otherwise you get a short overdense screen

Oh, and WP is renowned for not hugging the ground - the chemical reaction generates heat which tends to encourage it to rise. Actually quite hard to make cold smoke fast (outside - dry ice doesn't count.

And, yes, you do need to limit the size of screens (depending on the shell size - smoke rounds only have so much capabilty you know... 50m sounds way to large for me - I have never measured it, but I would allow say 2 x 81mm for a 30 m screen say. Oh, and wind makes smoke much less effective.

[ChappyCanuck]

here is another one: is it my imagination or do smoke rounds "disappear" once the HE complement of a battery is depleted? And does this work in reverse? (ie if I use a smoke bombardment mission at the start of a battle, are all the HE rounds "disappeared"?) Or am I just losing my mind? lol

[sburke]

here is another one: is it my imagination or do smoke rounds "disappear" once the HE complement of a battery is depleted? And does this work in reverse? (ie if I use a smoke bombardment mission at the start of a battle, are all the HE rounds "disappeared"?) Or am I just losing my mind? lol

not your imagination, but also not quite how it works. The mechanism is confusing but essentially the HE count is your total rounds. Of THAT count x amount can be smoke.

[Bulletpoint]

here is another one: is it my imagination or do smoke rounds "disappear" once the HE complement of a battery is depleted? And does this work in reverse? (ie if I use a smoke bombardment mission at the start of a battle, are all the HE rounds "disappeared"?) Or am I just losing my mind? lol

I asked the same question long ago, and happy to pass on the info: Artillery guns use up a 'powder bag' for each round, whether it's smoke or HE.

So if you have 100 HE and 40 WP, then firing the 40 smoke rounds will leave you with powder bags for 60 HE rounds.

Mortars don't have the same issue, as far as I know, as the propellant is included in each piece of ammunition.

[Baneman]

I asked the same question long ago, and happy to pass on the info: Artillery guns use up a 'powder bag' for each round, whether it's smoke or HE.

So if you have 100 HE and 40 WP, then firing the 40 smoke rounds will leave you with powder bags for 60 HE rounds.

Mortars don't have the same issue, as far as I know, as the propellant is included in each piece of ammunition.

On-board mortar ammo is WYSIWYG. Off-board works as Bulletpoint stated.

[Bulletpoint]

Yes I just realised my off-board 107mm mortars deplete their HE ammo by firing smoke as well. Big mortars used separate propellant bags too?

[ChappyCanuck]

Thanks for the answer Bulletpoint!

[Baneman]

Yes I just realised my off-board 107mm mortars deplete their HE ammo by firing smoke as well. Big mortars used separate propellant bags too?

I have no idea how it works in real life, but I suspect that it's easier from a coding point of view to have all off-board arty work the same way.

Even 81mm off-board mortars function this way.

[Ultradave]

I asked the same question long ago, and happy to pass on the info: Artillery guns use up a 'powder bag' for each round, whether it's smoke or HE.

So if you have 100 HE and 40 WP, then firing the 40 smoke rounds will leave you with powder bags for 60 HE rounds.

Mortars don't have the same issue, as far as I know, as the propellant is included in each piece of ammunition.

This depends on the artillery also. 105mm and 75mm is cased ammo and the powder bags are in the brass casing. 155 and 203 mm are separate with a "stack" of powder bags.

[Pelican Pal]

I think the way artillery currently works is a legacy from CM:SF. If anyone recalls CM:SF doesn't list the number of rounds remaining for most weapons and instead had a bar. People didn't like it and it was changed in CM:BN. However, attached to that system was a way of determining ammo available to artillery.

The system goes: that artillery, especially anything that would be available off-map, would almost never be firing their entire complement of ammo at the request of a Company or lower commander. Instead that commander would be given a period of time to fire, a weight of fire, or number of rounds available to him. So what you are doing is using your allotted firing time/number of rounds on smoke rather than HE.

[poesel]

Regarding smoke: what annoys me especially for on board mortars is that spotting rounds are also smoke. So if you plot a linear barrage and you only have 8 smoke rounds chances are that three of them fall somewhere useless and you are left with less for the actual screen.

If that happened in RL then ok but I'd rather have it that HE rounds are used for spotting. That would also hide the fact that you plan a smoke screen in first place.

[Erwin]

Re linear smoke. I use that a lot and don't recall a problem re the rounds landing in one area.

[Michael Emrys]

Re linear smoke. I use that a lot and don't recall a problem re the rounds landing in one area.

Me too. What I noticed is that rounds land somewhat randomly along the line that you have laid out, and if the line is too long for the amount of smoke rounds that you have on hand or have allotted to the mission, then yes they might tend to bunch up just as a statistical fluke.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

Some tanks also have smoke ammo. However, the WeGo system and the TacAI make it difficult to really use it.

I read somewhere that standard procedure in the hedgerows was to have a tank fire a smoke shell at each opposing corner, to blind any machineguns before advancing.

Playing 1-minute turns, the tank simply fires all 8 smoke shells at the target point, wasting most of them because there's no added benefit from a thicker cloud.

Also, the TacAI will aim all the shells at the exact same point (with some minor deviation of course), whereas in real life, they would be spread out if the purpose was to create a smoke screen.

I'm highlighting these issues with smoke not to complain but rather to reflect on how the game systems represent real tactics.

If Battlefront wants to change the system, maybe they could use some of the code for targeting artillery, so that the tank could do a "line mission" or "area target" for the smoke and would then spread the shells around within the selected area - with deviation of course, depending on the crew skill.

[Warts 'n' all]

The only way I try to get around the problem is to give the tank a short movement command and then have it "Target Light" or "Target Brief" somewhere new. Hopefully it will still have 1 or 2 smoke rounds remaining at the end of the turn. And I also have to hope that I haven't moved it into the line of enemy fire.

[Erwin]

Now we have 15 sec TARGET increments, it's possible to fire at one target, reverse, move forward and then fire at another target. Actually I used to do that b4 the increments update.

[A Canadian Cat]

The only way I try to get around the problem is to give the tank a short movement command and then have it "Target Light" or "Target Brief" somewhere new.

In fact a face command at the way point is enough. That is if you cannot find something else to shoot at

[Warts 'n' all]

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind.