Smoke artillery mission uses HE? Not available after HE used?

[ClarkWGriswold]

Which guns are they?

The US 75mm and 105mm use semi-fixed which is a similar situation where you match shells to projectiles.

The problem is, even if you're talking about guns that use separate projectiles and powder charges (such as battleship guns), the current system still doesn't make sense because it uses up both types of rounds (HE and smoke) right away. If it were a case of only having X number of powder charges, then smoke shells shouldn't magically disappear when they haven't been fired and when there are still enough powder charges available to fire them.

[Magpie_Oz]

Sure I am not disputing that.

[Peach Operations]

I understand the logic Battlefront is using here, however, there's one problem -- there's nothing in the game interface that informs you that you'll be using up your smoke rounds when you make plans to fire off all your HE in a medium (or longer) duration barrage. Sure, you'll see that happening once the barrage is fired off, but it'd be nice to know beforehand.

Right now, you just see "HE" and "Smoke" -- to my newbie eyes, that looks like "I have this much HE and this much smoke, just like if I was looking at a tank's ammunition screen." Maybe you could list "### rounds available" and then separate numbers for the max HE, smoke, etc rounds available. For example:

80 rounds available total

max 80 rounds HE

max 30 rounds smoke

Thoughts?

[ClarkWGriswold]

I understand the logic Battlefront is using here

I sure as heck don't. If they're trying to simulate X amount of "fire time", then whichever round you are not using at the time should not deplete. If you have 40 smoke rounds available, they should not start disappearing until you've fired off all but 39 of your HE rounds (leaving 39 HE and 39 smoke). The fact that the smoke rounds disappear first (whether or not you've actually fired them) doesn't make sense from a UI standpoint and it still doesn't make sense given the explanation about how it's supposed to operate.

[Major SNAFU]

Is there any chance of getting an official comment? Clark's reasoning seems to make sense to me.

If it is a total time allotment, the smoke should not decrease until the end.

[Major SNAFU]

I understand the logic Battlefront is using here, however, there's one problem -- there's nothing in the game interface that informs you that you'll be using up your smoke rounds when you make plans to fire off all your HE in a medium (or longer) duration barrage. Sure, you'll see that happening once the barrage is fired off, but it'd be nice to know beforehand.

Right now, you just see "HE" and "Smoke" -- to my newbie eyes, that looks like "I have this much HE and this much smoke, just like if I was looking at a tank's ammunition screen." Maybe you could list "### rounds available" and then separate numbers for the max HE, smoke, etc rounds available. For example:

80 rounds available total

max 80 rounds HE

max 30 rounds smoke

Thoughts?

But Clark's point,if I am understanding him correctly, is that in the conditions you describe if you fire your first 30 rounds of HE, both the HE and Smoke allotments decrease until you have 50 HE left and 0 smoke. This makes no sense from a time or total round allotted paradigm.

It should go something like this:

Firing HE mission first:

80 HE, 30 Smoke

79 HE, 30 Smoke

78 HE, 30 Smoke, etc.

.

.

.

30 HE, 30 Smoke

29 HE, 29 Smoke (regardless of which type of fire mission it is.)

.

.

.

.

1 HE, 1 smoke

empty

OR

Firing Smoke mission first:

80 HE, 30 Smoke

79 HE, 29 Smoke

78 HE, 28 Smoke

.

.

continue firing smoke until:

51 HE, 1 Smoke

50 HE, 0 Smoke

This would truly be mapping out a total of 80 rounds available, with no more that 30 of them being smoke rounds.

If it is:

Firing HE:

80 HE, 30 Smoke

79 HE, 29 Smoke

78 HE, 28 SMoke

.

continue to fire only HE.

.

51 HE, 1 Smoke

50 HE, 0 Smoke

Then this penalizes the player because it is saying either use smoke at the beginning or forfeit it. So to have smoke available for a withdrawal, you either need to have a separate battery just for this purpose or use very little of the artillery to reserve smoke.

This doesn't seem realistic to me as all the reading I have done emphasizes that the US was profligate in its use or artillery almost as a matter of doctrine.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I agree. The way it currently works is backwards.