Smoke grenades, did LW2 alter how they work? (and for the better)

[Lady Alecto]

Just wondering as I thought Smoke was just your run of the mill defense boost in the cloud, but after experiments with them and watching enemy behavior i'm wondering if they do a lot more now.

Example A: troops in a cloud weren't shot at by enemy overwatch till leaving the cloud, despite being in the open (advent smart enough to wait?)

Ex B: A extraction where I thought I was fubar due to staring down 10+ enemies vs 2 shinobi and a spec, popped a smoke cloud for them to run into, and it's like they just went off the grid, the confused enemy ran back and forth outside my sight range rather then advancing for what I thought would be the end of the team.

More I look the more i'm wondering if it's not just a defense boost but a total block of enemy vision, was that how Vanilla ones worked too? I never used them much then or now. But i'm thinking in some cases in LW2 they could be real life savers, even over how OP they made upgraded bluescreen/sting flash bangs.

[.O.]

I don't really use smoke much so I can't give you any answers/observations. But one thing that I can confirm is that it does not completely remove their visibility of you. I have been shot at while inside smoke before.

[SeniLiX]

Smoke will grant a bonus to defense to any unit inside the effective area. Personally I haven't seen any other effects.

Effective use of smoke can be very valuable in certain situations. Don't underestimate their usefulnes. ;)

[SamBC]

Pretty sure the aliens/advent have, at least some of them, an effective "fire control" value so as to not take low-chance overwatch.

[krabdr]

Doesn't it grant a low cover bonus? Isn't it -25% to hit? Couple that with a high cover bonus and it's virtually impenetrable.I keep a smoke grenade on my sniper and on my rangers. I also take the "Smoker" attribute in the AWC when it's available. They're quite handy in a pinch such as when your shinobi doesn't kill the ayy and is sitting there naked to the wind...

[talemore]

Originally posted by Dragonkat42:

Just wondering as I thought Smoke was just your run of the mill defense boost in the cloud, but after experiments with them and watching enemy behavior i'm wondering if they do a lot more now.

Example A: troops in a cloud weren't shot at by enemy overwatch till leaving the cloud, despite being in the open (advent smart enough to wait?)

Ex B: A extraction where I thought I was fubar due to staring down 10+ enemies vs 2 shinobi and a spec, popped a smoke cloud for them to run into, and it's like they just went off the grid, the confused enemy ran back and forth outside my sight range rather then advancing for what I thought would be the end of the team.

More I look the more i'm wondering if it's not just a defense boost but a total block of enemy vision, was that how Vanilla ones worked too? I never used them much then or now. But i'm thinking in some cases in LW2 they could be real life savers, even over how OP they made upgraded bluescreen/sting flash bangs.

I hope smoke grenade don't works the way you described it. It would very broken to be able to wait until the target comes out of the smoke and then kill the target without the need to add the defense bonus.

Running forth and back is a vanilla bug. It can trigger by many things. It sometimes trigger when the enemy tries to move without triggering overwatch. There's two versions, move safe and move unsafe. What happens is the game tells the alien to move safe and the AI instead of moving to another place decides to move back to the starting position.

Smoke grenades have a soundrange of 30 and reducing vision range doesn't work the way you want it to work. The AI will always try to take the shot and the vision range is not a limitation for the AI. When a pod pops, it's based on your soldiers vision range. The aliens can see your soldiers, but them are not allowed to attack until it's your side who see's them. Reducing weapon range creates the bugs you described, when the AI can't take the shot, it must make a move who isin't shooting. It can also be the case the shot is lower than what the AI allows to be acceptable and bias it must make a move who isin't shooting and this move must be made safe making the Aliens moving front and back. Checking the AI can also make this when the AI makes a move and then reveals the move checks them with yellow badge, but in lw2 enemies sometimes ignore this making it hilarious to kill them off after the alien moves to a flanked position, but it can be one way lw2 tries to solve a bug in vanilla.

[Stray Inu]

About enemy not firing, it has been confirmed that they won't bother trying to shoot if their chance of hitting you is almost impossible, and in that event they will either reposition or overwatch. I have not heard about anyd etails about overwatches waiting for you to leave smoke though.

[Lady Alecto]

I think the bug you mentioned Talemore may be a part of it, while running the mission I hacked a tower for the random enemy mind control, in the middle of the pods, and a drone as distractions. The enemies were tripped but they only saw the hacked mobs as I skirted the edge of the map away from them, perhaps that also could explain the odd movement behavior?

[.O.]

there's a couple of bugs with the hacking reward for enemy mind control both in vanilla and in LW2. I imagine these are actually vanilla bugs, that LW2 maybe made even weirder? Not too sure:

1. I gain control over an enemy. One turn later I gain control of another enemy of the same type.
2. I gain "control" over an entire pod in that they switch sides, but I can't actually control any of them.

[Incunabulum]

Any smoke degrades LOS distance. I've had aliens not visible (even though only 8 tiles away) because smoke from a fire obscured them.

So smoke grenades should limit how far away an alien can be and still have your dudes show up as visible to them.

Then, if they are close enough, the smoke provides a base 25 DEF bonus (basically upgrades no cover to half, half to full) with an extra 20 possible with the right perk.

[talemore]

Originally posted by Incunabulum:

Any smoke degrades LOS distance. I've had aliens not visible (even though only 8 tiles away) because smoke from a fire obscured them.

So smoke grenades should limit how far away an alien can be and still have your dudes show up as visible to them.

Then, if they are close enough, the smoke provides a base 25 DEF bonus (basically upgrades no cover to half, half to full) with an extra 20 possible with the right perk.

Reducing los distance and visual distance are different things, smoke from a fire is not like a smoke from a smoke grenade in xcom2. What smoke grenades should or shouldn't do is wishful. The defense bonus from smoke is 20 in vanilla, but it's like said upgrades 1/2 cover to full even if it doesn't count as full cover when calculating Line of sight. Even the less, smoke grenades are less useful than in vanilla, because of the new grazed shot effect who makes it possible to shoot at targets who has (hunker down+aidprotocol+full cover+smokegrenade) so it's most of the time an item you use to gain a slight advantage when waiting for an evac, or preparing to use an evac. Using a smokegrenade during a battle, most of the time you are countered by the enemy throwing flashbangs and this can continue for many turns making it impossible to counter flashbangs with smoke grenade because flashbangs simply turns off the ability to use grenades. The los distance is the weapon range and the visual distance is the sight range of your soldiers.

[happy]

smokes are just smokes but i do feel like there is something in the alien AI script that makes them really hate to waste actions on low odds.

so smokes are quite awesome in lw2, and i ve learned to rely on them, carrying one in every mission, they just are too good.

sectoids will raise Zs instead of shoot, vipers will poison, some overwatches will not be triggered, and i've seen healthy advent choose to anticipate a two turn flank instead of shooting.

indeed, smokes do indirectly more than just give 25 cover.

one little thing that may be important too: you have soldiers than can have up to 10 natural def bonus, add that to a smoke and low cover and even you are hit twice you re likely to be just grazed... twice

big difference: 2 damage versus a dead soldier.

not due directly to smokes but the crit/graze mechanic truly makes them more efficient.