Smoke!

76mm · #1 July 22nd, 2014, 04:23 PM

I've been playing a few quick battles, German/Soviet July 1944, and am a bit suprised by the amount of smoke deployed by German and Soviet units which are under pressure. Is this generally realistic?

While I'm sure the Germans used smoke, did they really have that much? I've seen German AFVs use smoke several turns in a row... And did Soviet infantry really have smoke grenades to get them out of a jam? I haven't really read about Sov infantry using smoke in this manner.

If not, any way to tone down the smoke?

jivemi · #2 July 22nd, 2014, 08:50 PM

IMO infantry smoke is excessive, although there's an item at lonesentry.com which indicates German infantry, at least, had smoke grenades and "candles." There's also a discussion at theminiaturespage.com which suggests other grunts had it. Maybe you can use the editor to tone it down a bit.

I recall reading accounts of German and British tanks using smoke in David Irving's The Trail of the Fox and Stuart Hills' By Tank Into Normandy. You can Google "tank smoke shells ww2" for a little more info, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot.

76mm · #3 July 22nd, 2014, 09:55 PM

For tanks I'm not talking about smoke shells as much as smoke grenades that they pop off while under fire.

scorpio_rocks · #4 July 22nd, 2014, 11:13 PM

If you look in mobhack you will see every armoured vehicle has a "smoke discharger" field, this is the number of times in a battle a tank can "pop smoke" to obscure itself. Generally this means 1 or 2 for German and 0 for Russian AFVs.

The smokescreen laying abilities of the T34 for instance (oil on the hot engine) are NOT modelled in the game but was used a lot in the war.

Infantry smoke whilst disengaging is an abstraction, was used (certainly by German, US and UK troops), and is agian, IIRC limited in number of uses. I seem to recall one of the abilities of the command A0 unit is it can use more smoke.

gila · #5 July 23rd, 2014, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 76mm

For tanks I'm not talking about smoke shells as much as smoke grenades that they pop off while under fire.

I'll reckon you be talking about the STuF and STuG's assualt tanks.
They have smoke dischargers (2),they were needed as they were turretless, good frontal armour not so on the sides.
If they recieved a close hit it would mean jocking the vehichle to change facing at the threat which takes time so some german engineer figured smoke dischargers might work.
I don't think it's much a problem as smoke can be a double edged sword,immediatlly fire suppressve fire into the hex,lock on some morters on the vicinty and manuever using that smoke as your cover also,or just still and wait.

Turret · #6 July 23rd, 2014, 10:27 PM

Should smoke be in the same hex as the unit firing the smoke?

scorpio_rocks · #7 July 24th, 2014, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turret

Should smoke be in the same hex as the unit firing the smoke?

on the ground scale yes - for game mechanics no (it doesn't block line of sight to the hex only those behind it).

Imp · #8 July 25th, 2014, 07:19 PM

I think for WWII infantry smoke use may be a bit over the top but not done major research.
US for sure used it, Brits & Germans to a lesser extent. Rest probably hardly used apart from maybe engineers, storm troopers & the like.
USA & perhaps Brits from 44 were possibly the only sides with regular availability.
However game does not really take that into account, most late German artillery should only have a few shells available due to shortages for example.