Matrix Games Forums

Anyone ever saw the AI using smoke screens before assaulting?

I have never seen the AI use smoke, except when a unit is retreating.

It would be nice, if it used it when maneuvering in an attack. I have read posts where people claimed the AI used smoke though...

Originally posted by 11Bravo:
...I have read posts where people claimed the AI used smoke though...

Well I think I read about that too, sometime, somewhere, but never saw it myself. Maybe it's some sort of white whale?

I've seen it in scenarios where it's set up by the designer but never in a Generated Battle.

Figmo

I think i've seen it!Don't take me for a fool but i remember that in a generated assault battle where the AI was the German and i was tthe brit at the beginning their mortars started to fire smoke to cover the advancing engeneers.
regards

I too have seen it once or twice in a generated battle (I believe I was having Germany assault Soviet Union) Might even have been computer vs computer (was just running a battle while I was working on something)
But anyways, it's possible but rare. (from what I've seen)

I've seen the AI use smoke in generated battles many times (prior to V5). It didnt always put the smoke where it should have been but it did use it!

Me too, 4.5 at least. Playing against the Germans, they would lay some smoke in an assault at the exact opposite ide of the board they were assaulting, totally out foxed me...

Hello.
When the AI is assaulting, usually it laids a smoke courtain to hid his troops. But I remember than in Steel Panthers 1, the AI tanks fired smoke to cover fellow tanks from enemy fire (mine!). And the initial smoke barrage was followed by more smoke, if necessary. Now it only fires smoke in the Bombarment pre-turn. Perhaps smoke routines had become simpler?

I've seen the AI use smoke in a pre-planned artillery bombardment a few times. Can't say it has been particularly successful.

Ususally the AI puts it down in mid points still forcing his troops to enter my line of fire. Sometimes it seems to fall at random points on the line which would my divert me later in the battle but usually in a defence my forces are pretty fixed in the first few turns anyway.

So all in all its both rare and ineffective which is a shame. IN SPWW2 in on of the very few aspects that is better than SPWAW , the AI makes very liberal use of smoke (and very effective I might add).

Maybe something for future iterations of SPWAW (or the qualtitative leap that is CL).

I've played hundreds of generated battles in long campaigns and I've only seen the AI use smoke in assaults and then not always. There may be some smoke on the initial bombardment, but the target area rarely has anything to do with covering the assaulting troops. Usually the target area is around tone or more sets of victory hexes.

Originally posted by timc:
I've played hundreds of generated battles in long campaigns and I've only seen the AI use smoke in assaults...

Well, maybe I didn't pay enough attention but can't remember any smoke barrages since SP3. I'm surely aging faster than I thought I was pretty sure AI only used smoke dischargers and inf smoke grenades.

Originally posted by Gloo:
Anyone ever saw the AI using smoke screens before assaulting?

In SPW@W not nearly enough. When I went back and loaded SP1beta from an old demo cd, I was surprised at all the smoke that the ai tossed. I played the scenario between the Japanese and Soviets and was surprised at the effectiveness of the smoke. Though the way units seemed to take forever to regain shots after shooting or being shot at made me vow to never again load the game up.

As it is now the ai can't do a river crossing at all due to lack of smoke. I would hazard a guess that the ai should smoke with around a third of their tubes but don't, they are going for the suppresion/kill not the isolating effect of smoke, which would allow the application of local superiority.
thanks, John.

The problem with an AI that always uses liberal amounts of smoke when tactically indicated is that smoke ammo was fairly rare, and generally not very effective.

Chemical smoke was more often than not defeated by the wind; huge amounts were needed to reliably produce a truly opaque screen of any size, which required an awful lot of tubes (or planes) to deliver in a timely manner. A battery of 105s wasn't going to cut it.

Hot smoke, if you had enough, created solid clouds of smoke that could block whole hexes in almost any wind; but they evaporated without a trace two to three minutes later when the phosphorus went out. Again, unless you have a lot of smoke ammo and a lot of tubes to throw it, this isn't going to screen your advance very well.

On top of this, very few people had smoke ammo. Some tanks might, and a western army could well see a couple of grenades per squad; but very few support units were both issued smoke and could be expected to find it in a hurry. Supply services, often overstrained, didn't waste time hauling a lot of smoke around when the customers were screaming for HE...and the gun crews weren't all that interested in making sure there was fuzed smoke ammo ready when they were scrambling to get enough HE shells ready.

What this usually meant is that if there was a smoke screen between you and the enemy, it was because he was firing a lot of TNT at you. Effective use of smoke at the level of 50 meters per hex was, and should be, rare.

Smoke is used for two purposes;

short term tactical: fire off dischargers to hide behind while moving to or away from the enemy

longer term tactical or operational: Smoke generators were basically engines that dumped fuel into their exhausts to make longer lasting smoke. This could be to blind the enemy (smoke curtains) or just limit their visibility (smoke haze). The CHICOMS lite forest fires to cover their movement into Korea as an example of operational use of smoke.

On a different note:
<rant>I am frustrated at the amount of smoke grenades that units pop while retreating. In a game, as I shoot up enemy infantry, they pop successive smoke grenades as they retreat for 2 or 3 hexes. Multiply this by 20 or 40 units and the map quickly becomes covered in smoke and the game degenerates to me stumbling blindly through belts of smoke, being close assaulted by unseen units and loosing all concept of fire and maneuver.

If real life mobile warfare was like this, I could accept it but I have never seen such use of smoke in any doctrine. The one exception is when a patrol is on a trail with limited room to maneuver, they may toss smoke (& HE & CS) to break contact and fall back. I've never seen doctrine nor read first person accounts of units in the open always poping smoke as they fall back (at least until they run out of smoke). </rant>

I thank you all for the replies. I learned a few things from these and that's cool. By the way, could you tell me what are "the CHICOMS" ? An acronym for some special forces?

About these opinions on smoke screens and smoke dispensers/dischargers, I totally agree with the fact that they are alotted too generously. I was very surprised to discover in the 4.5 release that the PzI were equipped with smoke dischargers... ! As John G said, I too think the IA was more aware of the usage of smoke ammunitions in the past years... You're also right when saying it's boring to see all these inf squads poping smoke all the way!
Still some work to be done on the OOB Editor... !

CHICOMS = chinese communists

Maybe the AI has become more health conscious, and is enjoying a new lifestyle free of the harmful effects of smoke?

The OOB editor can't stop infantry from popping smoke when they retreat. Whether they have smoke or not, they find some whenever they want to run. Infantry heavy battles become very short ranged affairs...

Originally posted by Aleksandr Morozov:
CHICOMS = chinese communists

Ooops, I see!
But I was close, it actually was some sort of "special forces"!