Smoke Grenades

[svidangel]

Are these working at the moment? They don't seem to be limiting my sight range or the aliens. Was playing around with how to use it in the new version and I'm getting sniped right through a solid wall of smoke about 15 squares deep.

[Andeerz]

I think it just ends the weapon effective range and does nothing to the sight range. I am not entirely sure, but that's what it seems to do for me, as things do seem less accurate when fired through it.

[StellarRat]

Are these working at the moment? They don't seem to be limiting my sight range or the aliens. Was playing around with how to use it in the new version and I'm getting sniped right through a solid wall of smoke about 15 squares deep.

I think they only reduce fire accuracy. However, that still is useful if you have to cross open ground.

[lemm]

There was a good discussion about this a while back.

Basically, smoke has "range reduction" and "precision modifying" values which are somewhere in the .xml files. You can play with them as you like.

There was a suggestion that smoke could also have a reaction fire suppressing effect. Personally, I thought this was a great idea as it lets you use the smoke as cover to move across an open area or to peek forward, but it doesn't make you invisible or invincible in the middle of the battle field.

[GizmoGomez]

I agree with that, lemm.

Reducing range, accuracy, and the chance for reaction fire make sense, to me at least. It would make smoke a bit more useful, too, but in a logical way.

[svidangel]

Ah, I was hoping for something that actually limited their ability to see me, not just reduced their accuracy from 3 heavy plasma bolts hit me to 1-2 heavy plasma bolts hit me. Sigh. My poor beta squad mid-november. Only had hope, ballistic/laser weaponry, and about 30 useless smoke grenades. Good times, good times.

[svidangel]

Probably too late now, but it would have been great if each smoke square counted as 2 squares for vision range, or something like that. Diagonals would have to be mathed a bit.

[Sathra]

I've been playing Apoc, and the smoke grenades are...interesting. They last a couple turns, but anything inside is invisible at anything but point-blank range.

Makes hunting down Anthropods pretty interesting since they use smoke alot.

[svidangel]

yeah, I would prefer that they actually did something to obscure vision, not just reduce accuracy somewhat.

[StellarRat]

yeah, I would prefer that they actually did something to obscure vision, not just reduce accuracy somewhat.

Well, the problem is that our smoke isn't a very good model of smoke in general. I like it the way it is. By reducing the accuracy mathematically you get the same affect as not being able to see the target for brief instants. The amount of accuracy reduction is adjustable too. So, if you don't think it's effective enough post something in the beta ground balance discussion and maybe they'll turn it up.