Artillery smoke availability

[DRG]

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

[chuckfourth]

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.

[DRG]

chuckfourth said:
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.

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.

chuckfourth said:
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.

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

[chuckfourth]

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.

[Mobhack]

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

The Nebelwerfer 41 can fire three different types of projectiles: high-explosive shells, incendiary projectiles, and smoke projectiles.

The high-explosive shells include those with supersensitive fuzes and those with delayed-action fuzes. The latter can penetrate reinforced cover. Because of their fragmentation and concussion effect, high-explosive shells are used primarily against personnel. It has been found that the concussion has not only been great enough to kill personnel, but occasionally has caused field fortifications and bunkers to collapse.

The incendiary projectiles are psychologically effective, and under favorable conditions can start field and forest fires.

The smoke projectiles are used to form smoke screens or smoke zones.

[This Die Wehrmacht article naturally does not discuss the possible use of gas-charged projectiles.]

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

[chuckfourth]

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.

[DRG]

"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

[chuckfourth]

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

[chuckfourth]

the russian site for 122 is now at
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?...=144&Itemid=64
and more generally.
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?...d=54&Itemid=64
Best Chuck.

[DRG]

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