Smoke shells

[Cathrynn]

Is there a way to get my mortar to fire smoke rounds, or maybe there's another type of arty that fires smoke?

[ewt.strat29]

right now smoke is useless though.

[Cathrynn]

@ Immolation, thanks, I'll have a look.

@ Strat, in what way is it useless?

[Petrolsky]

It doesnt cover your Units in the way it should.

[Petrolsky]

It just cover your unit when it is _in_ the Smoke, so the Enemy always knows where the Unit is, so its.. useless.

[Osseon]

Smoke provides no stealth or visual bonus against your enemy, its mearly eye candy to block the enemy player's vision. The enemy AI will still shoot through smoke at any infantry they detect. Honestly its the #1 feature I want implemented. It would change gameplay drastically.

[Cathrynn]

Yeah, I see what you mean!

I've just finished doing some tests in the editor by throwing smoke grenades in front of my tank to try and hide it from an AT gun but the AT gun was able to hit my tank through the heavy smoke (4 smoke grenades) just about every time. There's no way the AT gun should have been able to do that. :(

[HaZZarD]

Originally posted by Oss |LMC|:

Smoke provides no stealth or visual bonus against your enemy, its mearly eye candy to block the enemy player's vision. The enemy AI will still shoot through smoke at any infantry they detect. Honestly its the #1 feature I want implemented. It would change gameplay drastically.

+1

[Cathrynn]

Been doing somemore tests and it would seem you need at least 6 smoke grenades to be able to hide a medium tank, if only the tanks had smoke dispensers.

[GeneralJ927]

Aslong as your troops don't fire and there is no enemy off to the side with clear vision of your troops, then smoke grenades work fine in blocking vision and make them invisible.

If your shooting at the enemy and throw smokes, ofcourse they will be useless, also smoke grenades/shells don't trigger instantly, takes a few seconds to activate the block vision cover.

[undergroundgeneral]

GeneralJ927 is right, smoke blocks enemy vision just if the soldier in the smoke does not fire his weapon. So combined with the hold fire butten it makes good cover for taking flags.

[Osseon]

Originally posted by GeneralJ927:

Aslong as your troops don't fire and there is no enemy off to the side with clear vision of your troops, then smoke grenades work fine in blocking vision and make them invisible.

If your shooting at the enemy and throw smokes, ofcourse they will be useless, also smoke grenades/shells don't trigger instantly, takes a few seconds to activate the block vision cover.

Originally posted by Bear:

Been doing somemore tests and it would seem you need at least 6 smoke grenades to be able to hide a medium tank, if only the tanks had smoke dispensers.

Its a placebo effect, it doesn't work. It hasn't worked since AS1.

If we got get a Dev to confirm or deny this it would clear a lot of people's misconceptions up. Does it actually hide units or provide any stealth effect or does it do nothing but put up a graphical effect that the AI can see through.

[Cathrynn]

I agree with GeneralJ927. I did more tests with only infantry and found that, in general, smoke kills the enemies LOS to your soldiers, and vice versa. But. Only if your soldiers do not fire their weapons. Even firing at the ground behind the smoke was enough to give LOS. So, if any of your soldiers open fire then the game is up: LOS is restored to both you and the enemy. Basically, both of you are able to put down reasonably accurate fire through the thick smoke at this point.

[Prowlinger]

Hmmm a tricky way of doing it...

Step 1: Unit X is viewing through smoke, Unit Y can be detected 10% chance of the time per check.

If unit X has detected unit Y through smoke then unit X has -50% to hit unit Y. If unit X or Y moves then 75% chance to lose target of unit. If unit has lost target then back to step 1.

If Unit X is nearby a number of friendly units looking through smoke (5) then detection = +25%
If Unit X is nearby a number of friendly units looking through smoke (10) then detection = +50%
If Unit Y is firing through smoke then Unit X gains a +10% of detection
End


I am not a programmer but it seems it could get tangled up in game performance decrease by many calculations vs so many factors...

[HaZZarD]

I would really like to see the smoke mechanism reworked, this is one of the features I'am looking more for changes.


Having smoke shells for mortars would be awesome

Would be interesting to use your mortar to fire smoke rounds at enemy's tank to blind the crew and finish it with your inf.

[ewt.strat29]

after all this time... i never knew smokes worked lol! i swear they didnt work in AS1. I didn't see patch notes in AS2 changing this.

I must do tests.. this is a big revelation and will change a bit of my gameplay...