So the question is: is there anything, that a regular player can do about the smoke? Are there some parameters that control the smoke dispersion time, that one could access with hex editor?
At the moment I'm just so pissed about this smoke issue, since it really ruins a lot of PBEM-games, these are the most usual cases that I have encountered:
- Rendering a pillbox useless, one smoke round from 81mm mortar is enough and the pillbox is already bypassed by the enemy when the smoke has despersed. Wow, you can fire probably once or twice and after that, you can kiss those ~100 points goodbye. Actually, any ambush, by any unit, can be rendered useless totally by one or two smoke rounds...like a couple of infantry smoke grenades would really do that! Where are the instances that a couple of 105/150mm guns would hold up even bigger military units??
- Gamey tactics of driving Jeep + scout / APC + infantry / whatever close to LOS of enemy unit (let's say: a German Sturmtiger) and render his firing sector totally useless with a single smoke grenade. Gee, that 380mm rocket won't penetrate smoke at all and the enemy units can have a barbeque party some 200 yards behind that magic curtain. You really should be able to are fire through that smoke...that 380mm rocket would just do wonderful damage even though not being fired at a specific target.
- Co-operation between Uhu Panthers and mortar APCs: fire some smoke shells (direct fire) to the hilltop and drive your Uhus behind that smoke screen. Wow, you can target and engage all enemy units without being fired at. This way you can run around the battlefield, dropping smoke in front of enemy path and just sit behind some smoke random puffs and kill everything. Smoke simply blocks the LOS too easily.
Most of these problems would be gone, if this smoke issue would be corrected. Of course, people would still be inventing new, gamey, tactics, but these smoke-related problems are really pain in the backside at the moment.
Oh well, maybe I just have edit the OOBs and remove infantry smoke grenades (almost) totally and reduce the amount of smoke grenades from indirect artillery units...or something like that.
Oh, it would also be nice to be able to reverse with tanks...
-Colonel von Blitz-
How the hell would you expect the "corkscrew and blowtorch" method to work without the benefit of armor support unless liberal use of smoke was used? The Marines were brave, but they weren't stupid.
