Eliminating smoke grenades

Igor · Post by **Igor** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 8:43 am

Is there any way to tone down or turn off the ability of infantry to use smoke? The blithe assumption that every infantryman has an infinite number of smoke grenades (whether a squad in that army would have any or not) is wearing a bit thin. It can get downright silly when a 4 man recon team keeps dropping smoke grenades by the dozen (every turn, if need be).

Let's face it; smoke in the open wasn't that effective. One or two grenades did not create an inpenetrable screen at all altitudes that stretched 50 yards across. Yet any squad with lousy morale can lay a perfect 200-300 yard screen in one turn by simply running every time they're shot at.
One such hex per game per full Western squad perhaps; 5 per turn from a two man KMT or Polish recon team is out of line.

bbbf · Post by **bbbf** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 12:26 pm

hmm, my men never seem to have more than 2 smoke grenades, is this a setting issue?

AmmoSgt · Post by **AmmoSgt** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 12:31 pm

Igor what ammo settings do you have set in your preferences ? try setting them to limited ammo ... most units i have used have 2 maybe 4 grenades total

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 7:35 pm

These can not be tampered with, unless designing a scenario, or to go into a save with Freds editor. These are not assigned as ammo physically, the most I ever saw in a squad was 8?!

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

Tankhead · Post by **Tankhead** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 10:25 pm

As for me I like to see more smoke grenades, I'm always short when it comes to smoke, even more so when you just landed 2 company of para troopers in the middle of a hot zone and the only way to keep your guys around and rally is to smoke the entire area so when the enemy move the para can do assault on your opponent turn. This is very important on the first and second turn of the drop. This give you an edge with your para troopers and chance of surviving are much better. Doing a smoke bombarmaen before the drop is no enough.

Tankhead

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Rick Cloutier rcclout@telusplanet.net
Coordinator: Tankhead's SPWAW Resources
http://members.tripod.com/tankhead__1

Nikademus · Post by **Nikademus** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 12:39 am

smoke grenade stocks have been GREATLY reduced since SP:WAW came around.

Additionally one of the first things Matrix fixed (i think SP:WW2 did it too) was that Inf could also no longer throw the grenades ridiculous distances and are now restricted to 50 yards.

Another (potentially) nasty trick introduced in WAW....sometimes popped smoke will not completely mask your inf.

I've lost track of the number of times i've popped smoke in a nasty situation only to give that 'till now hidden MG nest another OP fire shot at my exposed unit.

ug.....hair puller that. So i dont believe personally that they need further curtailing from my experiences.

Igor · Post by **Igor** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 1:03 am

I've got limited ammo on; it suits the period I'm playing (guerrillas with unlimited shells?), and it keeps rocket launchers and strike aircraft from devastating the whole map by their lonesome. An offboard Guards Mortar battalion (Katyushas) with unlimited rockets would be rather messy, wouldn't it.

Still, it isn't *my* troops with too many smoke grenades (technically, they shouldn't have any at all). It's the AI, who also shouldn't have any (at least, fighting the KMT), who can pop two or three during my turn then one while they retreat during the AI turn then a couple more during my next turn and then blanket all of Fukien for all of me...(gasp)...sorry, I get carried away.

Regrettably, I can't edit away the smoke using Fred's editor. Until the game deigns to have PTO settings for generated campaigns (1939, I hope), the campaign will crash and burn if I edit it in any way at all. It's a pain sometimes; but you get accustomed to constant night battles after a while. I guess I'm just going to have to live with the smoke. grumble grumble.

[This message has been edited by Igor (edited January 20, 2001).]

RobertMc · Post by **RobertMc** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 2:22 am

I think we're not talking here about the smoke grenade "loadout" but rather the way the computer pops smoke so often?
Like when the enemy infantry retreats? Or when your own men retreat? We're talking about the automatic smoke grenade pop?

I agree. This is way too often and is probably a "gamey" holdover from SP1.

troopie · Post by **troopie** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 3:48 am

Originally posted by Nikademus:
smoke grenade stocks have been GREATLY

Another (potentially) nasty trick introduced in WAW....sometimes popped smoke will not completely mask your inf.

I've lost track of the number of times i've popped smoke in a nasty situation only to give that 'till now hidden MG nest another OP fire shot at my exposed unit.

ug.....hair puller that. So i dont believe personally that they need further curtailing from my experiences.

Machine gunners are trained to shoot at smoke puffs . On a field you describe the gunners would just send fire across it. They wouldn't see soldiers, but they wouldn't have to; the smoke tells them someone is there.

troopie

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Pamwe Chete

Igor · Post by **Igor** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 9:14 am

Of course, nasty minded infantry would throw smoke on the east side of the obstacle, and attack around the west...

Charles22 · Post by **Charles22** » Mon Jan 22, 2001 10:04 pm

I agree with Igor to an extent, and I think his complaint isn't that one unit has too many but that there's just too much of it in general. I really tire of shooting a full infantry squad, particularly during mopping up, only to see it perhaps lay smoke for four or five hexes that it evacuated. You almost hate to shoot at lead infantry units with "too much" effectiveness, because it then could wall off so much. My objection, isn't so much that the smoke is too easily supplied, but that it's always used defensively and makes a large section of the map a huge smoke city. The reverse of this is to have infantry in your own ranks, that may be in front of your tanks, which completely cuts off the tanks field of fire to support it.

Greg McCarty: I'm not on the wrong end of it, myself, as I'm generally the one doing the slaughtering. If my troops use more than 5 smokes in one game, it's uncommon. It's the enemy laying it in a hopeless situation that can be annoying. This sort of thing becoming commonplace, almost calls for an entire strategy to deal with it (not harming the lead infantry "too much" is a step in that direction), but I haven't thought one up just yet.

Igor · Post by **Igor** » Mon Jan 22, 2001 11:11 pm

Actually, I'm more bothered by the squad which lays a 5 hex long screen than by the overall amount of smoke. I must confess that I would be more than happy to have a button which forbids any but indirect fire smoke. I would be even happier if the code only let infantry and such like lay partial smoke screens which go away in a turn (and can't be laid at all in bad weather); and only two of them per game to boot. But if I can't have any of that, I'll settle for an ironbound limit of one or two smokes per game.

You're right; there's too much smoke. Grenades weren't and aren't that good; and nobody carries enough of them to even try for a screen 100 yards by 50 yards by Low Earth Orbit which lasts a quarter hour or so. Most squads considered themselves lucky if the smoke screened them; and the densest smokescreens (hot smoke grenades) evaporated instantly after a couple of minutes when the phosphorus burned out.

Tube arty could lay the kind of smoke we see infantry dishing out here, and should be able to continue doing so; but that's it. And now, if you'll excuse me; my soap box is looking a bit worn...

Btw; if I ever figure out anti-smoke tactics, I'll let you know. Believe me, I'm trying.

panda124c · Post by **panda124c** » Mon Jan 22, 2001 11:45 pm

Originally posted by Charles22:
I agree with Igor to an extent, and I think his complaint isn't that one unit has too many but that there's just too much of it in general. I really tire of shooting a full infantry squad, particularly during mopping up, only to see it perhaps lay smoke for four or five hexes that it evacuated. You almost hate to shoot at lead infantry units with "too much" effectiveness, because it then could wall off so much. My objection, isn't so much that the smoke is too easily supplied, but that it's always used defensively and makes a large section of the map a huge smoke city. The reverse of this is to have infantry in your own ranks, that may be in front of your tanks, which completely cuts off the tanks field of fire to support it.

Greg McCarty: I'm not on the wrong end of it, myself, as I'm generally the one doing the slaughtering. If my troops use more than 5 smokes in one game, it's uncommon. It's the enemy laying it in a hopeless situation that can be annoying. This sort of thing becoming commonplace, almost calls for an entire strategy to deal with it (not harming the lead infantry "too much" is a step in that direction), but I haven't thought one up just yet.

I like making smoke screen by chasing an infantry unit across the map as he pops smoke. I have noticed that the smoke popped by a retreating unit blocks all vision through it unlike the smoke I pop to cover my troops.

Charles22 · Post by **Charles22** » Tue Jan 23, 2001 12:28 am

pbear: Well then, you must love losing that first tank that has to stick it's nose into the smoke. It's not all that often that I "have" to stick a tank's nose into the smoke and as a result get assaulted, but it happens enough. This wouldn't matter so much if you could send more than one unit into the hex at the same time, but what starts out being a routed enemy getting mopped up, with smoke all around, ends up being one tank possibly being assaulted by 3 or more units. Not exactly characteristics found when one force is driving the other from the filed in dominating fashion. I can't imagine 2 platoons of infantry being hounded by 20 or more tanks, having to retreat/rout, and all of the sudden some genius comes up with putting smoke everywhere so they take out tanks.

It really gets silly when you have a whole set of infantry completely surrounded. So surrounded in fact that both the east/west sides of the force are smothered in smoke, because the surrounding force has routed units to those sides of the encirclement, so that there's a collective ball of units in the middle, amid much smoke within those hexes as well.

AmmoSgt · Post by **AmmoSgt** » Tue Jan 23, 2001 12:49 am

any of you guys play PBEM ??

Daniel Oskar · Post by **Daniel Oskar** » Tue Jan 23, 2001 12:54 am

The smoke is no doubt annoying. The thing that bothers me though is that while you are laying waste to the enemy infantry with a truly impressive volume of fire, they take off like Jesse Owens. If you are under heavy fire you would tend to act more like a worm than a cheetah.

JTGEN · Post by **JTGEN** » Thu Jan 25, 2001 9:15 pm

You can also use this smoke laying habit to your own adwantage. I have many times done so that when I want to block visibility from AI's tank and it has infartry in front of it. I make the infartry retreat and make the smoke for me, and I do not have to use the limited smoke ammo that my men have at use.

RockinHarry · Post by **RockinHarry** » Thu Jan 25, 2001 11:13 pm

Smoke or not. The different
nationalities also used different
amounts of it. Some have alot,
some none.

Who knows more about this?

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RockinHarry

orc4hire · Post by **orc4hire** » Fri Jan 26, 2001 12:44 am

The Fog Cloud of Doom is one of SP's more annoying features, but it's as much a characteristic of the endless opfire as the way the map gets so smokey that visibility quickly drops to 1 hex....

That is, when an enemy unit is in a position where you have to get him out, and have to move next to him to do it... 1 good squad can chew up a company in the most absurd way in this situation. (Opfire without limit makes a mockery of the turn based combat; it allows a defending unit to use its full firepower against _each_ attacking unit, and each attacking unit only gets to use any of its firepower after the defender has fired. In other words, the defender's effective firepower goes up the more outnumbered it is....)

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Fri Jan 26, 2001 2:01 am

Originally posted by orc4hire:
... endless opfire....

That is, when an enemy unit is in a position where you have to get him out, and have to move next to him to do it... 1 good squad can chew up a company in the most absurd way in this situation. (Opfire without limit makes a mockery of the turn based combat; it allows a defending unit to use its full firepower against _each_ attacking unit, and each attacking unit only gets to use any of its firepower after the defender has fired. In other words, the defender's effective firepower goes up the more outnumbered it is....)

Well its not without limits. The defending unit has to pass a check. As you hammer at the defender and his surpression goes up, his chances of passing the check go down.

I support this feature. It represents a unit that is in danger of being overrun going into final protective fire mode. That is, it fires all its weapons at full rate, without regared to ammo expenditure or burning out barrels, in an attempt to put up a wall of steel and lead to fend off the attackers. Real units really do plan for an employ FPF. Its realistic although annoying.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.
OK, maybe just a bit faded.