Questions re smoke and offmaps/artillery

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Posts: 509

Ok so we all know (or should know) that line of sight reduces scatter for all kinds of arty barrages (mortars, howitzers what have you) and is required for some off-maps.

I had some questions about how smoke interacts with these.

1) So if I target something with an offmap (say an enemy arty piece) and he puts down smoke on it after I have clicked, will my offmap be canceled or will it go ahead? And if canceled do I get a refund? Are the effects different if I use mortar smoke or an offmap smoke? Is it timing based i.e. if he ordered smoke on it before i ordered off-map arty and target is still visible, then what happens?

2) Can a similar tactic be used to mitigate against an artillery barrage?

3) If there are is any kind of interaction, does the smoke physically need to be there or is jus telling the mortar to drop smoke enough? (mortar smoke takes time to deploy after-all)

Posts: 12

29 Jul 2015, 08:43 AMJunaid

Ok so we all know (or should know) that line of sight reduces scatter for all kinds of arty barrages (mortars, howitzers what have you) and is required for some off-maps.

I had some questions about how smoke interacts with these.

1) So if I target something with an offmap (say an enemy arty piece) and he puts down smoke on it after I have clicked, will my offmap be canceled or will it go ahead? And if canceled do I get a refund? Are the effects different if I use mortar smoke or an offmap smoke? Is it timing based i.e. if he ordered smoke on it before i ordered off-map arty and target is still visible, then what happens?
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I don't know the answer to all of your questions, but I can definitely say if you have line-of-sight (LOS) on a target and call artillery on it, smoke will NOT cancel your strike.

If the smoke has not taken effect, you can still target and call the artillery strike. You are right in that smoke must actually deploy before it blocks LOS. On a similar note, if you shoot smoke out of a sherman, it will take awhile with it's massive arc for the smoke to actually deploy. Hence using it in desperation might be too late as the enemy will have time to get some more shots off.

Smoke doesn't really help against mortar barrage abilities, because when they are triggered the unit does not actually need sight. It just barrages the area without trying to hit a unit. That's why in most cases, if your mortar has sight, there is no point in using barrage, it will be more accurate with normal shooting. I have a suspicion that the U.S mortar truck might be an exception to this though, because it is so inaccurate.

Posts: 2470

some stuff just won't fire if you don't have LoS for long enough (~~2 seconds); you can click but the ability just won't trigger. i know i've had this happen with globals like railway but i'm not sure about anything else. i don't think smoke has any effect on globals but it might on abilities.