Artillery smoke availability
 

Hello
It seems all in-game off map and on-map aritllery can fire smoke. However probably half or more of these guns didnt have a smoke round. As an example look at http://www.tarrif.net/ This site only shows smoke for the German 105mm standard divisional field piece, one of the 150mm guns and the 120mm mortar. Leaving the German 75mm, 77mm, 17cm, 21cm guns and 81mm mortar all without smoke, which they do have in-game.
It would seem sensible that the smaller guns wouldn't have a smoke round as these small shells wouldnt produce much smoke. The larger calibre corps type artillery, usually 15cm and up wouldnt have smoke rounds either as they dont conduct this sort of fire mission. Corps artillery fire missions are typically counterbattery, interdiction or targets deep in the enemy rear ie smoke not required. Also the chain of command is longer to the corps weapons. Laying of smoke normally needs to be coordinated with an infantry advance and so we would want a good direct link with the units firing, ie using our "own" divisions guns
For on-board artillery, this site lists these weapons as not having smoke rounds. Youll need to sign in to see it.
http://www.stormpages.com/garyjkenne...try%20Guns.htm
Russian 50mm Mortar
Italian brixia Mortar
German 5cm Mortar
German 75mm infantry gun
Japanese 70mm infantry gun.
in-game they have smoke.
Also from a russian site currently offline, see
http://www.battlefield.ru/guns/project_4.html
http://www.battlefield.ru/guns/project_1.html
http://www.battlefield.ru/guns/project_2.html
But when they were up they show no smoke for the Russian guns calibres 122mm, 152mm 210mm and 280mm
Some other points,
Rocket units in the game can fire smoke. As far as I can make out smoke rockets actually weren't made (nebelwerferfer may be the exception). This makes sense to me as Rockets lack accuraccy, a prerequisite for smoke delivery.
I think currently smoke persistence is related to visibility? Actually I think it should be related to wind speed. As wind speed is not modelled in the game then maybe the value of smoke persistence should be random rather than related to visibility?
Happy to supply a list of which guns did and did not have a smoke round of course.
Maybe it would be possible for off board artillery to have a total of say 80 shells and fire them as either smoke or HE as required? ie can fire 80 HE or 80 smoke.
Regards chuck

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

I am not going to dispute your references however, your post contains 2 inaccuracies which only serve to weaken your case.

1) 81mm mortars are certainly big enough to fire a very useful smoke round - a night shoot with 81mm WP is an impressive thing - I've done it.

2) Accuracy is not necessarily a requirement for a smoke throwing weapon - you really want controlled dispersal over a fairly wide area to establish the screen. This is why the nebelwerfers were so good at it.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

The short answer is there are no plans to change the way smoke is issued to artillery units . However, checking into this revelled another issue with the smoke that we issue to heavy arty units that we will look into in the future. Basically the really big guns are not supposed to be getting smoke and currently they are. However there are no plans to assign smoke on an individual gun by gun basis.

Don

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi Don
Fair enough that you would not want to look at each individual weapon to allocate smoke this is a lot of work, though I am of course willing to do this for you if you become interested in the future. I would just point out that if your looking at Heavy Artillery then you may want to have a quick look at rockets as well, as except for nebelwerfer none of these should have smoke capabilty (That I have been able to find anyway. Of course I am willing to look more thouroughly into rockets also.)
Thanks for your time Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Not very likely as WinSPMBT would need it done as well and that means virtually every artillery piece used in the later 2/3 of the 20th century and the first 1/5 of the 21st century for every nation in the game would need to be researched so I am quite happy with the game giving a few smoke shells out at random even if a few of the guns never used them. It's a "bug" that benifits neither the AI nor the human player as both sides could easily have a couple of guns that didn't get smoke but now have 2 or 3 shells. It's a very minor issue to me and the existing system is an acceptable abstraction.


You know we do not assign smoke based on individual weapons so how do we give smoke to nebelwerfer but not Katyusha ? The Heavy arty issue was supposed to be handled by unit class but we think a bit of code that determines warhead size is overriding that but that is still to be determined. It *MIGHT* be possilbe to restict smoke from rockets based on the WH size of the nebelwefer ( and which model gets the smoke? or do all sizes ? )but that means we have to ensure that no other rockets use that particular WH size and the code has be be written with care to ensure it's just that WH size for that class . Then we have to explain this to people who complain that their Katyusha's don't have smoke rockets when their mothers great uncle says they did even though it's not in any reference we can find. This is why I'm quite content with what we have now although I will review just how many smoke rounds are made available to rocket units and **perhaps** reduce them somewhat

Don

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi Don
Personally Id be happy to lose the nebelwerfers smoke capability if it makes it easier to removed smoke capability from the rockets "class" as a whole. But I guess someone else would complain. Nebelwerfer is a bit odd in this sense as it was developed as a substite for heavy artillery which the germans werent allowed to have according to the treaty of versi, to disguise this "cheating" the weapon was called smoke thrower, Personally I think it was not particularily useful in this role and probably not used as such very often. Reasons being its limited range, inherent inaccuraccy, and massive smoke signature making counterbattery a real problem. For this reason they, like most rocket units are designed to shoot and scoot, which is not what you want if you want your smoke screen to have any sort of persistance. I think it is a much lesser evil for the nebelwerfer to have no smoke issued than the alternative of every rocket unit in the game having AFAIK nonexistent smoke rounds issued.
Best regards Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi PatG
Very excellent work on the trains I must say.
for what its worth from
http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/fireplan.htm
"Smoke screens, using base ejection (BE) smoke, were used in fire plans, they could be predicted, although a `tester' to confirm the local wind was often used. Screens could be multi or single battery and positioned about 250 yards from the enemy to be blinded. Gun aim-points were placed in a line, with the distance between them depending on the wind direction. If the wind was along the line of the required screen then points were 300 yards apart, if across the line they were 75 yards apart. Whenever smoke was used there were alternative HE targets in case the screen was ineffective. One technique was to create a lane for advancing armour a few hundred yards wide between two screens, these blinded defiladed anti-tank guns, if the wind was favourable these screens could be rolling. Smoke screens could be sustained for long periods, on at least one occasion all day. "
Best Regards Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

taking smoke shells away from the nebelwerfers would be rather silly, as that was a primary design goal for the things, as well as gas (most armies that had specialist gas units tended to call them "smoke" units). Even if they ended up as HE chuckers more often than not, the smoke shell was still available.

e.g - lone sentry

Also Lone sentry second article

And finally - I found some reprints of the US Army Intelligence Bulletin at this site - may be of interest
WW" Intelligence Bulletins

Cheers
Andy

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

I dont think you should assume that just because tarrif.net and other webpages does not list a smoke round for a give gun, it couldn't fire or wasn't issued this type of ammunition. Tarrif.net does not list all available ammunition types for each gun, far from it. There were plenty of 75mm smoke shells available for German artillery, even for the 7.5cm PaK, at least when converted to a field artillery piece.

Mortars, even the smaller ones, could fire smoke rounds. The US 81mm certainly had smoke rounds as did the little British 2" weapon. I'd doubt the Germans were any different.

In any case, tarrif.net does list several 75mm smoke rounds for various German guns, including the 7,5cm IG http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Claus B

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi
This is your reminder email. I understand that you are no doubt flooded with work but I would like to point out that you mentioned smoke issued to heavy artillery and rockets (except nebelwerfer) may be removed but unfortuneately this revision didnt appear in the latest patch. Just wondering if it remains on the to do list? Also there is a third clear category that didnt have smoke and does in-game that is naval artillery. Obviously the smoke created by injecting fuel oil into the funnels was about 1000 more times effective than a smoke shell.
I am as always willing to help by identifying the units affected throughout the OOBs or anything else.
Best regards Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

"may be removed" is the important bit there.

The issue is still under review. All your links except tarrif.net are useless for information and I already said there is NO way to give specific guns smoke or no smoke. The ONLY way to do it in the game without tearing things apart and rebuilding ( which isn't going to happen ) is by WH size which means any gun/mortar/rocket that falls within the range we would specify would have smoke and if outside the range would not have smoke so there will ALWAYS be some gun that may stray to one side or the other of that line that either gets smoke when it shouldn't or doesn't when it should so if smoke shells exist for 75mm guns ( as they most certainly do ) then ALL 75mm guns will have smoke even if one particular model didn't actually have them issued to it.

As for smoke for rockets or not according to that ONE (1) source you list it would appear only the Nebelwerfer 41 has smoke but ONE source is not proof. tarrif.net doesn't even list one of the most common calibre guns in the Russian army in WW2 ( 122mm )so it's hardly a definitive source of information.

There *MAY* be a change in the next release and maybe not. It depends on what kind of input I get from others on this issue.

Don

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Very excellent,
Just curious if it was still on the back burner or not
Thanks for your reply and eforts.
Best Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

the russian site for 122 is now at
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?...&Itemid=64
and more generally.
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?...&Itemid=64
Best Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

And here's the link to the factory that made the shells in WW2

http://rea2006.rus-catalog.ru/catalo...000126_dwn.htm

Here the translation of that that is written on this page regarding WW2:

" In the 30's of past century and during World War II 1941-1945 the plant it let out the housings of 122- millimeter explosive, HE fragmentation, smoke, igniting and special projectiles."

This is also apparently mentioned in Isby's weapons & tactics of the USSR. 122mm Russian Arty could fire smoke despite what one website reports

Don

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

The "Tarrif" site only lists smoke ammo stats if the author of that site has them available. So it doesn't meant that they did not have smoke ammo.

I really dont think that limiting smoke ammo to sertain smaller calibres of guns is a good idea. You would need to research every nation and what kind of ammo did they use because there really is nothing to say a 150mm gun could not have smoke ammo. Also what about scenarios or campaigns and how they might be affected by a change like this? IIRC all versions of Steel Panthers have had some smoke ammo for the larger guns too.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

The really large calibre arty didn't use have smoke shells but in the game the "kludge" for smoke is that every gun gets a little bit and in the end this all evens out and nobody has ever complained ( until Chucky came along with his crusade )and we have never considered it an issue worth really worrying about. The code was supposed to filter smoke out of the large calibre guns but this is such and important issue ( not ! ) that we ,and everyone else who has tested the game , didn't notice that the 8 inch guns etc were throwing smoke.

Also, as I have explained before there is NO way give or take smoke away from individual guns. In the game there has to be a line drawn at a specific War head size and that is generally "around" 150mm but as you pointed out there is little to say if a specific 150 mm gun did or did not have smoke because in most cases ( and websites ) dealing with arty, smoke is a non issue but it's more than a bit presumptuous for anyone to assume that if one website doesn't list smoke for a gun then they didn't use it.

I have not committed myself to this change and if I do it will, by the very nature of the structure of the game, going to have to be a compromise. I have seen some info on US 155 guns having smoke ( WP. it does the same job ) AND I have Ian Hoggs book on German artillery and he lists a " bursting smoke shell filled with oleum/pumice" for the 15cm FH18 and FH40 so **IF** this does get changed it will likely be for warheads 9 and above and below WH 3 which means ALL 150mm arty in the game would still get smoke as they are WH 8 BUT as I said, no decision has been made. Removing smoke from the big guns really doesn't make much of an impact on the game and neither does leaving it but we are at the stage of development where "nit picking" issues like this has become almost the norm.

Don

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

I play a few different games that have arty with HE and smoke. When I use big guns, I use HE. Only in despiration would I use smoke with big guns. By then it is usually hopeless anyway.
I voted to leave things as they are.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi just some extra comments.
White phosperous is much closer to napalm as it burns everyone in a very large area. As smoke it not particularily good as it is very hot and soon rises up off the ground. Im not concerned which way you model this as the petrol bombs leave a permanent smoke screen anyway.
I noticed that rocket artillery does have its own class so I guess that it would be easy to remove all rocket smoke. Apparently this is a silly suggestion. but Personally I think the lesser of two evils is to lose one weapons smoke so all the others can be modeled correctly rather than get all the rockets wrong so one in particular is right.
Best regards Chuck.

Re: Artillery smoke availability
 

Hi
I think some units or possibly a class got missed in the smoke removals. Unit Class 43, it appears in the British and USA OOBs and no doubt elsewhere and doesnt seem to have has its smoke removed. Just in passing, the vessel in the picture looks a little small to be carrying 160 4.5 inch rockets.
Best Regards Chuck.