smoke round bug

[Pud]

Sorry search isnt working.

I know this has been discussed at length but I thought it may have been fixed in the 1.12 release.

I had 2 105mm how. on a hill overlooking a town, hidden. Eventually I ordered them to open up on a house containing inf. Both guns spent the whole turn firing smoke rounds (neither had fired a shot till this point) at the inf. Nothing returned fire to place them in danger. Next turn I tried again at another house, same thing happened, they eventually switched targets at a small group of inf in grove of trees and fired HE at that. :mad:

PS they were both in C&C of the company commander, not that I would think that would have much effect on this.

I now empty my smoke rounds from AFV against some patch of ground before "going over the top" but its a bit hard to do with your guns, as they would reveal their locations.

[ 06-10-2001: Message edited by: Pud ]

[David Aitken]

The only occasion I've had troops fire smoke when I ordered them to fire HE was with 3in mortars against a Tiger. Your gun maybe fired smoke because it felt vulnerable.

[Scooter]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken:

The only occasion I've had troops fire smoke when I ordered them to fire HE was with 3in mortars against a Tiger. Your gun maybe fired smoke because it felt vulnerable.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Pud,

You're right this has been talked about before. This a bug that people have complained about for a while now. David, you ought to know that.

I've seen it happen many times myself. In one instance I had a German (veteran) Pz IVH fire smoke in front of itself when it had a M4 Sherman presenting it's complete profile only 142 meters away! The Sherman's barrel, BTW, was pointing away from my Pz IVH and no other enemy tank was around. The reaction of firing smoke during a vulnerable situation has too much of a hair trigger, IMO.

I've even seen smoke rounds from mortars show up inside the bottom floor of an undamaged two-story building. Pud is right to bring this up again. There is something wrong with smoke rounds.

When people did complain about it, they were told to be quiet because, it would delay CM2.

Well, we were quiet -and we hope that it hasn't been forgotten for CM2.

[Redwolf]

I reproducable case with a savegame to go into the debugger is referenced in

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=017753

[Subvet]

I've had this happen as well. If you have an AFV that isn't going be busy in the beginning of the game it is advisable to just have him fire all his smoke in some out of the way place. It's a crude and kind of ridiculous "fix," but it's the only one I've seen. But Pud is right, this isn't really a good idea with guns since once they reveal themselves their lives are often very short. It would be nice to get a fix for this, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Freak]

Yeah, this has happend to me a more then a few times, and man it is frustrating. On Board 81mm mortars firing smoke when I ordererd to target infantry 300-700 meters away. Doesnt make sense, and it makes for some hair pulling scenes.

Hopefully this nonesense will be rectified in CM 2.

[Wolfe]

Yep. Can be very frustrating. Especially if you had intended to use the smoke later on for some other purpose. In most cases, it seems the units are trying to protect other friendlies who have come under enemy fire. This can be a good thing, but personally I'd rather make the decision whether to shoot the smoke or not.

But I've even seen tanks target (not Grey smoke, but a Red targeting line) an enemy unit and still shoot smoke at it! Even when the enemy unit isn't doing anything to warrant being smoked (i.e. moving laterally across the battlefield, not engaging my troops). I've even seen it countermand a direct fire HE order and replace it with smoke shells instead. As well as switch targets from an area fire to fire smoke directly at a unit. As well as choose to shoot smoke at the area fire target rather than HE. Arrrgh!

Thankfully mortars out of LOS of enemy units using an HQ to spot can't use their smoke at all.

When creating scenarios, I've started really considering if a unit needs smoke shells at all. If I don't think they're very important, I'll delete them and give it HE instead. I'd love to have the option of limiting FOs in scenarios I create to only being able to fire HE (or even just smoke for certain occasions). No smoke will limit the AI's tendency to smoke the entire battlefield (though admittedly, this does have benefits sometimes to protect his troops). The smoke-only FO would be for a special assignment, usually in conjunction with an assault.

BTW, there still seems to be a prob with tanks firing AP at infantry units when it's real low on HE. I don't see the point of wasting AP on infantry. Just shoot the tank's MGs and be happy with it. But I think that the AP thing may be different than the smoke thing.

- Chris