on the mechanics of Smoke in the current game of CoH2

As currently functioning, mortar smoke barrages, special commander abilities dropping smoke, and units' abilities to drop smoke - hereto referred to simply as Smoke - are a rather inconsistent and unreliable strategic factor.

Smokes are intended to obscure vision, purpose being hiding units movement. As it currently works, the smoke in CoH2 simply prevents small arms from engaging enemy forces, but STILL it grants FULL vision of enemy movement THROUGH and BEHIND the smoke, which in itself is head scratching... Not to mention the fact that support weapons, vehicles, panzershrecks, and flamethrowers can just target ground at where the enemy is, whatsoever negating the effect of smokes.

Afterall, vision of the player in CoH2 is restricted to the UNITS' vision - e.g. you cannot see in fog of war, you cannot see behind corners, buildings, etc. Yet for some inexplicable reason, you can see through smoke.

The reason for me being (to some extent) frustrated about this mechanic is that it could add so much strategic maneuvers to the game. In conclusion, I believe Relic's work on smoke mechanics is rather mediocre, and needs additional attention from developers. Unless of course I am missing something here...

Thoughts?

What are you talking about? You can't see through smoke.

What are you talking about? You can't see through smoke.

I can see through smoke... I can't make units shoot through it, but I see enemy movement IN the smoke and BEHIND the smoke.

What are YOU talking about?

What are you talking about? You can't see through smoke.

This.

This.

then I guess it is the way the game renders on my end LOL

because I CAN SEE IN and BEHIND the smoke

not reinstalling the game anytime soon

Units can't shoot what they can't see.

Entities are what 'see', not the player. They simply reveal areas for the player. Also, shot blocking and sight blocking are functionally in the same in-game. The entity has to find a way to make LOS to be able to fire unless it has attack ground.

So while you can see infantry on either side of the smoke, they actually can't see each other.

(Incidentally, this is what causes a ton of weird behaviors, especially from infantry, because there can often be glitchy sight blocking objects that rarely correspond with visual objects.)