Smoke

Increasing LOS for units does not make intuitive sense. Delaying the information by a few seconds would make sense, but is maybe not obvious for all players.

I think it would make some sense. Give it a lighter grey than the FOW, but still not full color like revealed FOW. But if I'm understanding you correctly, it would be like some kind of "delay", as in the units you see are where they were a few seconds ago or something?

That would be cute, like the airplane pilot is relaying what they saw in the air to the units on the ground. Would be a bit of a mindfuck and I would imagine it would require some extra calculations or something but possible to do I would assume.

because it non sense and NOBODY use IT !. AND YET call it a buff

it would have been quite good if there was no muni cost, but they had to fuck up and give it ~30 muni to pay for what mortars do for free

Even free ability, Smoke arty is pointless since it take too much time to relocate barrel and bumping full smoke baragge itself. Soviet tactic not forcus on Smoke - Hyper moverment like USF to be begin with.
Not to mention big Howie is not a smoke machine from the beginning. We are not Wargame series, We dont need Smoke from big gun to cover 50 tons MBT !
Instead of Giving ML-20 vet buff or actually useful ability, Balance game just waste time and scope for a big Smoke for no reason.

(decided to put this into a spoiler since the main topic is still about how smoke could/should function).

Show Spoiler

....But I don't see a benefit in specialized smoke like e.g. the Churchill's smoke giving additional buffs to infantry in it (although it would make sense gameplay wise as an infantry tank), then the smoke of an Scott giving different buffs, mortars again having different buffs etc. Even if there are reasons - different payload size, different chemicals etc - the game would not be readable or intuitive.

Funny that you mention Churchill's smoke because it the current implementation that is not readable or even intuitive. It current implementation is a stock, weird trailed "Panzer Tactician" with a different mechanic in on the most durable tanks in game. One is created by smoke canister on the turret of tank the other form the exhaust.

The name "Infantry Support Smoke", the description "A line of smoke is released behind the Churchill, allowing supporting infantry to advance safely. The Churchill will have reduced speed while deploying smoke" and the role of the vehicle all indicate that Relic was planning to make Churchill's smoke provided bonuses to infantries but was lost to a oversight.

The benefits of specialized smoke are clear. Can be used to make units better in the role and have added utility. In the case making Churchill provide cover status it would increase the synergy of the vehicle with infatry and be helpful in heavy infatry build.

If abilities like smoke in this case provide similar benefits the units bring less to the table making them less disable to build and usually the unit with more DPS is picked.

The overall idea begs the question where you set the cut offs. Even handheld grenades had different sizes. Then there is the 75mm Scott, 81mm mortars, 105mm howitzers, 120mm mortars, 152mm howitzers all using different shells, payloads etc etc. How many classes are necessary, where are the cutoffs?

Think I have provided a very specific proposal, other may add or subtract as they see fit.

Keep the system simple and understandable:
E.g. All smoke blocking sight OR giving the same set of bonuses would be okay, just the size of the cloud is different. That's an easy system. The best one for deep gameplay? Probably not, but understandable and -for the most part - intuitive. At least as intuitive as almost any other system that you want to represent in an arcade game.


(edited for clarity and added points)

I personally do not like the "shot blocker" effect of smoke and I would rather have it replaced from all smoke weapon.

Although I do agree that there benefits in keeping the "simple and understandable" in my opinion the benefits of customizing the effect to specific categories outweigh the benefits of keep the system simple.

The small arms system was very simple and the change to weapon profiles made more complicated. It also improved the game drastically.

Funny that you mention Churchill's smoke because it the current implementation that is not readable or even intuitive. It current implementation is a stock, weird trailed "Panzer Tactician" with a different mechanic in on the most durable tanks in game. One is created by smoke canister on the turret of tank the other form the exhaust.

The name "Infantry Support Smoke", the description "A line of smoke is released behind the Churchill, allowing supporting infantry to advance safely. The Churchill will have reduced speed while deploying smoke" and the role of the vehicle all indicate that Relic was planning to make Churchill's smoke provided bonuses to infantries but was lost to a oversight.

The benefits of specialized smoke are clear. Can be used to make units better in the role and have added utility. In the case making Churchill provide cover status it would increase the synergy of the vehicle with infatry and be helpful in heavy infatry build.

If abilities like smoke in this case provide similar benefits the units bring less to the table making them less disable to build and usually the unit with more DPS is picked.

I mentioned the Churchill's smoke because 1. you also mentioned it in your opening post for potential specialized smoke and 2. it is a functionally clear example of where specialized could be used to enhance gameplay (infantry tank buffs infantry around it). Maybe I was not clear enough, but I was not talking about the Churchill as it is now in CoH2, but rather hypothetically about giving the Churchill "smoke with added buffs" as Relic might have planned.

Think I have provided a very specific proposal, other may add or subtract as they see fit.

Definitely, I just wanted to reinforce that categorizations will always be to a certain degree arbitrary and hard to justify "objectively", hence less intuitive.

I personally do not like the "shot blocker" effect of smoke and I would rather have it replaced from all smoke weapon.

Although I do agree that there benefits in keeping the "simple and understandable" in my opinion the benefits of customizing the effect to specific categories outweigh the benefits of keep the system simple.

The small arms system was very simple and the change to weapon profiles made more complicated. It also improved the game drastically.

Just for clarity: It is still a LOS block. Anyway, I am also not a big fan of it in the cases where you can time the smoke well enough to block LOS just before the enemy tank has reloaded, thereby maximizing micro for the opponent. In other circumstances, it makes pretty much sense. It is a "gamey" component, just like the usage of ground attack in many other cases. CoH is an arcade game, we cannot capture all details.

I think we just disagree on how we estimate the "gameplay improvement vs readability cost" on the matter of smoke.

I am also not sure what small arms change you are talking about, but I guess the introduction of weapon profiles? Assuming this: My point is not necessarily about complication, but readability and intuition. The weapon profiles make, for the most part, sense. MGs are good long range, SMGs short etc. These are self-explanatory even without profound knowledge about weapons. With those weapons we can however see the same thing as with the exemplary abilities I have listed in the last post: If things become similar in name or appearance (by name, description, audiovisual presentation), players will assume they are similar in behaviour. Hence the confusion of different MP40s, G43s, scoped rifles (snipers and e.g. JLI making the same sound and traced smoke line for shots, but function differently). This lowers readability and leads to confusion.

And I don't see how you would be able to make such big differences in smoke that they become self-explanatory. They will be arbitrary. Probably improve gameplay, but still lead to a badly designed ability.

...
Just for clarity: It is still a LOS block...

It's both a LOS blocker and a Shot blocker.
It not the lack of sight that prevent unit from firing.

Unit will not fire on units in smoke even if they can see the enemy unit. Even removing FOR of war via cheat mode will not allow unit to fire.

It's both a LOS blocker and a Shot blocker.
It not the lack of sight that prevent unit from firing.

Unit will not fire on units in smoke even if they can see the enemy unit. Even removing FOR of war via cheat mode will not allow unit to fire.

I don't know that much of the technicalities, how Relic programmed it exactly and how cheat mode interacts with the game. I guess Relic wanted to hide or double ensure the wanted behaviour of smoke.
When I am talking about a shot blocker I mean that the projectile will be deleted or explode when colliding with the shot blocker. This is not the case for smoke. For small arms it does not really matter, since they don't have ground attack and can only shot at what they see.

I don't know that much of the technicalities, how Relic programmed it exactly and how cheat mode interacts with the game. I guess Relic wanted to hide or double ensure the wanted behaviour of smoke.
When I am talking about a shot blocker I mean that the projectile will be deleted or explode when colliding with the shot blocker. This is not the case for smoke. For small arms it does not really matter, since they don't have ground attack and can only shot at what they see.

A single line of trees/bush is a shot blocker and units will not fire pass them.

An attack ground order can make a weapon pass it and it will pass through without colliding with it. The same applies to smoke that acts as a shot blocker.

The shot blocker part of smoke is what I mostly do not like in the current implementation where you an have units hugging each other and still not firing on each other.

A single line of trees/bush is a shot blocker and units will not fire pass them.

An attack ground order can make a weapon pass it and it will pass through without colliding with it. The same applies to smoke that acts as a shot blocker.

The shot blocker part of smoke is what I mostly do not like in the current implementation where you an have units hugging each other and still not firing on each other.

Yes I agree that this is nonsense, but could be solved by some minimal vision/combat range, where shooting is allowed. Then at least units within the smoke could shoot each other, while units outside of it cannot.

Another solution would be to make smoke rounds have an area that would have a temporary disable weapons critical.

That would increase the player skill for getting most out of his smoke rounds since one would have to "hit" mgs in order to get full effects.

It would also give more tools for better balancing the ability since one could change the time critical lasts and ROF.