Random Black Clouds?

[PSY]

I've got some strange dark black smoke clouds which are showing up in my Quick Battles. I had them in my previous Quick Battle and now I'm seeing them in the current one. Last time I didn't have anything except for infantry around the area and they weren't shooting at the time. This time, there's more going on, but I don't see any of my troops or vehicles shooting anything that looks like it would cause the smoke clouds. Does anyone know what these are?

[MarkEzra]

Next time you see it...ceasefire and check for scared BMP-2...that's the most likely culprit

[hcrof]

I always figured the smoke came from burning vegitation hit by tracer or HE. Where you shooting at all?

[hoolaman]

Yeah they are BMP smoke projectors. They are all but useless, but the theory is that russian offensive doctrine called for smoke grenades to be fired well forward to blind your opponent.

[MikeyD]

Is there any Red armor on the map?

A U.S. vehicle drops his smoke in a curtain right in front, the old Soviet design smoke dischargers apparently fire to quite a distance. I've seen Russian smoke dischargers referred to as 'offensive' smoke dischargers, meant to blind the enemy your attacking instead of shielding you.

[EDIT] D'oh! Second time today someone beat me to the answer as I was typing - memo to self - type faster!

[PSY]

Next time you see it...ceasefire and check for scared BMP-2...that's the most likely culprit

There is in fact a BMP-2 in the game, but it's pretty far away. Here's another screen shot showing the BMP-2 -- it's on the far-right corner of the screen. It seems too far away to be generating these as some kind of smoke screen. I guess I can finish up the game, reload the save and then ceasefire and see where everything is.

Last game I had them in there was also a BMP-2, probably about the same distance away from the smoke smudges as the ones in the screenshots, although I thought at the time, neither he nor I had seen each other.

[PSY]

Yeah they are BMP smoke projectors. They are all but useless, but the theory is that russian offensive doctrine called for smoke grenades to be fired well forward to blind your opponent.

Aaah, well that would explain it then. It does seem awfully far away to be useful.

Thanks everyone!

[Pandur]

i have to say they are even far from useless in the game(especialy playing red vs red!). in this special case the tacAI is useless. it was something like patch 1.02 or 1.03 and everyone complained about missing selfpreservation of vehicles wich led us to troubles like vehicles reversing much to far back only to drive into another danger and strykers and BMP´s and the like, throw smoke and reverse after some MG sprays. this is worked out till now at least to a part but the biggest problem persists.

the tacAI, equiped with offensive smoke pods, "thinks" it has "defensive" one, as the feature was coded especially with blue side in mind(obviouse). now we have the russian vehicles launching smoke to protect themselfs while the design of their smoke launchers isnt made for the thing they want from it -> doesnt work. but its not the fault of the launcher design itself.

[GSX]

Aaah, well that would explain it then. It does seem awfully far away to be useful.

Thanks everyone!

It would be useful if you were on the assault with an OMG in Germany in 1992! Its a case of something that exists for one reason being coded as another thing (offensive smoke being treated as defensive as mentioned above).

The Soviets doctrine was offensive and so all of their energies were put into that medium.