Limited firing of smoke?

[LutzP]

I'm new to CM, trying to find my way through the commands and I did not find an answer to this in the forum - please excuse me if this has indeed been answered before: When firing smoke directly from a unit, i. e. not as a part of an artillery support mission, I only have the option "Target Smoke", right? (I am not talking about the self-defense "Pop Smoke" command, I want to place smoke tactically & at a distance.) Is it possible to limit this fire to, say, 2 or 3 shells? What I experienced is that when I order a Sherman to "Target Smoke" it fires 5 or 6 shells in under 1 minute. I tried to Pause it for 45 secs and then Target Smoke, but even though the Pause counted down the tank fired merrily away in the interval. I suspect I am missing something obvious, but what?

(I do not discuss whether it makes sense to fire fewer shells, I just want to know if it is possible.)

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by LutzP

[mjkerner]

Welcome!

Not really easy to do, LutzP.  You can Target Smoke, put a Pause Command for say 15 seconds or whatever, then put a short Movement order, like 1 Action Square or whatever, then on that Waypoint, use another Target Command. Play around with the Pause timing and number of Movement Orders to figure what works best for that vehicle to get X number of smoke shells. With on map mortars you can Target Light and they usually pump out 3 shells per minute.  (Unit soft factors will affect all this to some degree.) 

Edited May 1, 2021 by mjkerner

[LutzP]

Thanks a lot! Yes, I figured I could use a combination of movement and fire commands but thought I could spare the experimentation involved . However, I cannot get the tank to wait with firing. A sequence pause - move - target is executed in the order pause & target - move (& target, if shells left). Shooting always starts immediately on execution.

Edited May 1, 2021 by LutzP

[mjkerner]

Yup, Pause only affects movement orders, not firing orders. Target Light (for mortars) or Target Briefly sort of limits ammo, but not in a way to help, generally. You can Target Briefly and do a short move right away for X distance, and the smoke will be limited, but still round will always come out of the pew pew end of the barrel right away. (At least as I recall.)

[Warts 'n' all]

Normally I "Target Smoke" "Pause" for 5 seconds. "Reverse" one AS and "Face". Providing you haven't got a super fast Loader it should expend just one round of Smoke. 

[LutzP]

Now this is tricky - and it works! I am not sure which part of the sequence actually stops the Target command. It also worked with slow forward movement as long as I add "Face", otherwise (without "Face") the tank just kept firing. With 15 sec Pause, 1 square Slow Forward, Face I get 3 shells off (the 3rd during the movement). I also could stop firing smoke by executing 2 short backwards moves without adding "Face": Target Smoke, Pause 5, Reverse, Reverse fires just 2 rounds, the 2nd one during the 1st Reverse move.

Thank you!

[mjkerner]

One has to wonder at the armor knowledge of a 400-year-dead fellow, let alone his ability to communicate with us about it, eh LutzP? This and many other wonders await you here!

[LutzP]

Indeed they do!

[Warts 'n' all]

37 minutes ago, mjkerner said:

One has to wonder at the armor knowledge of a 400-year-dead fellow, let alone his ability to communicate with us about it, eh LutzP? This and many other wonders await you here!

Hahaha. The didn't call me "Ironsides" cuz I sat in a wheelchair in a TV studio all day. I knew a thing or two about armour in my time, young fellow me lad. And now me and my mate Raymond Burr are off for a pint.

[Bulletpoint]

On 5/2/2021 at 7:54 AM, LutzP said:

I am not sure which part of the sequence actually stops the Target command.

The "facing" command.

[Warts 'n' all]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

The "facing" command.

Yes, spot on. I shouldn't have taken it for granted that someone would know that using "Face" automatically cancels the previous targeting order.

[mjkerner]

1 hour ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Yes, spot on. I shouldn't have taken it for granted that someone would know that using "Face" automatically cancels the previous targeting order.

Me too. I didn't even mention the Target command.

[The Steppenwulf]

There are other problems with smoke use in BN (probably other CM families too). If you call in HE artillery rounds, once fully expended, any smoke rounds the artillery piece possessed are then lost. I think the same happens with tank smoke rounds too.

Inadequate really... and I'm sceptical that BF have a great deal of will to fix these sorts of things, it's all about selling more content, instead of fixing and improving on gameplay and features.  

[Combatintman]

20 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

There are other problems with smoke use in BN (probably other CM families too). If you call in HE artillery rounds, once fully expended, any smoke rounds the artillery piece possessed are then lost. I think the same happens with tank smoke rounds too.

Inadequate really... and I'm sceptical that BF have a great deal of will to fix these sorts of things, it's all about selling more content, instead of fixing and improving on gameplay and features.  

I'm not sure this is the issue you think it is.  Smoke rounds for both artillery and AFVs are a smaller proportion of the ammunition count than HE for the former and HE/AP for the latter.  Once you run out - you run out.

[Bulletpoint]

On 5/22/2021 at 4:42 PM, The Steppenwulf said:

If you call in HE artillery rounds, once fully expended, any smoke rounds the artillery piece possessed are then lost. I think the same happens with tank smoke rounds too.

It doesn't happen with tank smoke rounds. You can still fire those after expending all the HE ammo. The same goes for on-map mortars. You still get to shoot their smoke rounds after expending their main ammo.

[The Steppenwulf]

I'm sure you are both right - I did some limited testing of armour and artillery myself after I posted this and I experienced no problems.

However I do recall having experienced some issue with smoke at some point, but I can't quite put my finger on specifics. It may have been tank smoke screen launcher in fact - number of discharges - and might have been in BS or SF2. And it's entirely feasible it's just a one off bug rather than across the board. Obviously I'll revisit, if/when I stumble on it again.