Smoke tactics

[SgtMuhammed]

I have seen tips scattered about and thought we should have a place to consolidate them. Obviously the game needs arty or engineer smoke but until that deficiency is corrected lets see what we can do with what we have.

Vehicle Smoke:

You can aim the smoke by either facing the vehicle or turning the turret with a covered arc.

The best is the Stryker Smoke. Large cloud, quick to deploy and billow.

M1 Smoke smaller and slower to deploy but good once billowed. In reality the M1 smoke screen is almost instant. The grenades litterally explode a cloud out.

Bradley Smoke, worse U.S. vehicle smoke. Slow to billow and too far from the vehicle. Hard to tell exactly where the screen will end up.

(All the smoke should be like the Stryker smoke. It is designed to break LOS with ATGMs and tanks firing at the vehicle this means it has to deploy fast.)

Vehicles can put out large amounts of smoke and can cover a wide area if the wind is right. It is almost always a good idea to pop smoke before you dismount troops unless you are absolutely sure that you are covered or at least concealed. Be aware though that putting smoke directly on an enemy position seems to give the advantage to the defender. They can see you moving better than you can see them sitting still.

Hand Held Smoke:

Too small compared to real thing. It can be useful if used correctly. It is absolutely vital to pay attention to unit facing or you will waste your smoke. It works best if you can have several units throw into the same area. Obviously that area must be smaller than where you would use vehicle smoke.

General Tips:

The most obvious use is to screen movement. This means you can use it to move to different floors as well. Good for moving to the roof and not getting blasted before you can get setup. You can also use it if recieving heavy fire to give yourself a bit of a breather although this doesn't always work.

One technique that I have found for moving if the wind is in your favor is to pop smoke and then move in the cloud as it moves. You can stay in even a hand held smoke cloud for a couple hundred meters. I have noticed that even thin looking smoke can be effective if there is a lot of it.

If you have any tips or observations please share.

[DaveDash]

You've covered the main points. One small note for WEGO players. Pause for at least 30 seconds with Stryker smoke, and other smoke at least wait out the 60 seconds before charging into it.

One other suggestion regarding smoke (perhaps suggestions should be done in general area?). Units need to be able to fire through smoke. If Im playing a Human and he pops smoke, I want to be able to hose the area with automatic weapons, and defensively smoke then can be used as an ammo wasting/decoy technique. At the moment, I don't think you can fire INTO smoke since LOS is blocked.

[ December 12, 2007, 10:47 PM: Message edited by: DaveDash ]

[ThePhantom]

Great point, DaveDash. The smoke screen makes a protective shield that enables anyone inside the shield to become invincible. No LOS can be pointed through it or on it. When wind is used in the scenario - you can sneak by a strong defensive position. I wonder what would happen in a two player game? Can you aim at the ground before a passing smoke screen and area fire into it?

[Pandur]

i post some pictures how i use RED side smoke. i kinda like the trade that i cant applie a defensive use of smoke on RED side but just an offensive.

here in a quick battle;

and here towards the end of Strength&Faith;

now the limitations i noticed;

the Syrian smoke is acually not really working i "feel". i didnt noticed that this volume of smoke produce a level of "concealment" like it possibly should.

its looking good but the black smoke clouds are no hinderance for LOS. you can spott right through them.

now i wonder if they realy "just" spoil the enemys aim or if they "should" be a LOS block when used like in the pictures.

[JohnO]

What are you using to test the smoke LOS? Is it vehicles or ground troops?

[Pandur]

well in the quick battle shot i posted i had everything dismounted. so i tried with troops only since the BMP´s shot the opposition to pices through the smoke allready.

ovcourse i noticed it the most the other way round; when i send squads forward through the smoke they got fired at and while viewing this from "locked camera" ground view perspective "i" was not able to see anything more than some of my soldiers and black smoke all around. so they simply must have spotted me through the smoke.

honestly i didnt ran tests so far, just what i expirienced while useing the smoke in scenarios. thats why i said i "feel" that the RED smoke is broken somehow becouse i realy tried to get a nice smoke screen in my path of advance and i did it, but it lacked noticable effect.

[SgtMuhammed]

You know I have never really looked to see if Syrian smoke actually works. I'll run a couple tests when I get home.

[Pandur]

You know I have never really looked to see if Syrian smoke actually works

funny thing is that i didnt used to smoke like that on the RED side for some good time.

acually at first i thought that the way the RED smoke gets projected is a bug

that moment i tried to smoke around a single BMP wich squad was around it at beeing shot at.

the smoke at first didnt showed up and after some time i saw it far away in front of the vehicle.

its clearly a bug, i thought

i asked about it here in the forums and learned that this is indeed on purpous and since i am fan of REDvsRED battles i thought about how to use this in a way it supports my intentions ingame.

well there i came up with the idea of using platoon or company smoke volleys 2 or 3 times over a period of 3 - 4 rounds to get a smoke screen like in the pics.

it works like a charm to get it up and stays there a rather long time even with medium winds.

but than, the more i used it the more i felt that it isnt totaly working like it should.

its totaly different for the US smoke, its definitely no penetratable by LOS as we all notice so often when we use it, but how many people realy use Syrian smoke!?

thats another reason to belive that there could realy be something wrong becouse you "normaly" see syrian smoke when a BMP wich is about to be toasted uses its launcher like the strykers would in self preservation. ovcourse it has no effect as it doesnt work like that, but the point is that the average player wich playes US the most(my undersanding) really cant notice that RED smoke isnt working right becouse he rarely sees it.

on the other hand, in the first version where the stryker smoke was falwed it was knowen all around and it was promptly fixed(1.01 or 1.02). that speakes up for wich side gets played the most.

[Pandur]

a quick one, i played a QB from US side and noticed that US infantry wasnt able to look through the RED smoke clouds, the LOS tool showed no LOS.

now the strange thing, they couldnt look throught the smoke, but they managed to spott every vehicle through the smoke, as soon as the LOS tool was moved onto a vehicle in the cloud it showed LOS, to the ground next to it LOS was broken again.

i saw it working becouse i looked closer and used it more often since i wrote the post here.

but something is defenitely wrong.