LogicalHarm

I think if DICE decided to make smoke thicker in the next patch the smoke grenade might be quite useful. At the moment i would say it's completely pointless bar distracting an unorganised team.

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Lorax74

People have been saying this very thing since the first patch was announced years ago...

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Mercenary90

That's why I think the Radar Grenade is a lot more useful: the smoke it gives off is totally opaque at close range, if my memory serves correctly.

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He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed.

Reaperassault

well the "thickness" of smoke depends on the users settings

lower graphics settings use less particles and therefore less smoke effect
higher graphics settings use more particles and therefore smoke effects look fuller and darker

I'm with Lyra on this, smoke grenades are a great way to reduce your own situational awareness. All the new TGU graduates can explain how very important situational awareness is to keeping your butt alive in a fight.

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SharinganTH1422

That's the thing I hate most about smoke, it's great they can't see me, but I just get so nervous and over-paranoid when I can't see anything that's going on around me. SITUATIONAL AWARENESS PEOPLE. Plus you know you're about to get owned because they at least have one IDS on that flag...

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Anger is a gift - Malcolm X

TrippyD

I actually find smoke to be more confusing for the people within it than anything else. I rarely bring them with me but when I do I usually throw them at enemy camps to confuse them before my squad rolls in. Unfortunately, with one slot reserved for the defib, there is only one open slot for an assault character to fill, and rockets are a much better choice.

pred011586

One thing I've done very effectively with smoke grenades, is assaulting Statue from Com Tower of Belgrade. As I approached the wall, with my squad firing rockets to keep their heads down, I'd through a smoke grenade far to the north, near the walker spawn, then go up the southern staircase. I don't use it often since I'm normally Support on Belgrade, but everytime I have, I get to the flag untouched.

Just because there's smoke, doesn't mean you HAVE to use it for cover, because of the rarity of smoke grenades on TG, and the overall high quality of play, most people's first reaction to enemy smoke grenades is to aim into the smoke and wait for them to come out since you'll see them before they see you. You can use that to your advantage by throwing smoke away from where you're actually coming in from. Or even better, throw it onto the enemy's position. I've assaulted Power Station effectively by throwing a smoke grenade onto the building south of the flag where the enemy squad was rocketing us. This completely blocked their vision forcing them to choose between fighting us on even ground, or let us have the flag.

The key is to not look at smoke grenades simply as portable personal cover. It's also *almost* as effective as EMP grenades at messing up an enemy's defensive position, and unlike EMP grenades, you get to carry a defib with it! One thing to keep in mind though, you never need more than 2 smoke carriers. Rockets are still too important for long range covering fire, but one or two experienced smoke users can make a world of a difference in an assault.

On defense they also have a use, but I would never pack them specifically for defense. If you happen to have them on you when your squad starts defending though, look around! If you see a path that the enemy is going to take, throw them a smoke grenade. This may sound stupid, but look at it like this. If they run through the smoke, you know EXACTLY where they're going to appear, whereas once they're out of the smoke, they have to scan the area quickly in order to find targets. If you're camping the smoke, you'll slaughter them as they come out of the smoke.


This is getting kind of long so I'll sum it up:

For effective smoke grenade usage:

- Anti-Sniper: Use the smoke for personal cover when crossing a no-man's land, but make sure you'll be in cover when you leave the smoke (approaching Statue's wall on Belgrade is a perfect example).

- Close-Range: Smoke the enemy's position, not yours. This includes any enemy armor that you're trying to take down. Don't give up your situational awareness when you can take away the enemy's!

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Mercenary90

I'm not sure if anyone else does this, but I usually carry smoke grenades if I'm on Belgrade's Com Tower, Playground, or Monorail. Usually, I throw the smoke onto the upper floor of the building I'm about to enter, then go up.
With regular smoke grenades, I have to look for faint silhouettes to shoot at (which doesn't usually end well), but with radar grenades, I usually rely on the IDS effect to aim (IE aiming from radar).
Of course, this is of questionable effectiveness, judging from what Lyra and Reap have said.
Otherwise, I just use the two grenades to get closer to Ganz users or moving out of cover when there's a lot of people shooting at me.

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He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed.

Adaxa

Like reaper said, the effectiveness of smoke totally depends on the enemy's graphic settings. A year or two ago when I ran 2142 on low, smoke grenades were laughably useless. It was like silhouettes, you couldn't make out exact details, but you can shoot at those shadows easily enough. Now that I run it on medium, it looks much better.

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Active in: BF2142

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LogicalHarm

Yes you can go on about your own situational awareness, but by very definition, your enemy also has situational awareness which means it can also be distracted with smoke grenades. So that argument doesn't really fly.

Yes Pred, comtower is a flag where i have seen effective use of smoke, but it is really an exception as it's the most 'cluttered' or covered flag in the game.

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SharinganTH1422

Quite frankly I'd rather fight a seeing man with my eyes open than a blind man with my eyes closed.

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Anger is a gift - Malcolm X

Reaperassault

Well think about this, with all the grenades and rockets that are (hopefully) flying about the chances you getting hit by them in the smoke is pretty good (the smoke is not that big of an area) while you sit there and die with out being able to return fire or avoid that situation in the first place.

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pred011586

That's you you throw the smoke at the enemy's position. Let's say on Suez Canal, if you're attacking Dry Lake from Trash Dump, lead with a Smoke grenade between Oil Station and Dry Lake to call attention over there, then throw a Radar grenade near the flag and a regular smoke away from the flag, all while rushing the flag. If the enemy goes up on the buildings to see over the smoke, they won't see you in the smoke and will make themselves easy targets for rockets, if they move towards you to get out of the smoke, then the only place they can go and still have an angle to shoot on the flag is to run towards your incoming squad, blindly, easy pickings. Trash Dump -> Dry Lake is a really good example because unless their already on the buildings, Rockets are useless while assaulting.

There seem to be two really good reasons to NOT use smokes. First being no rockets, which is by far the more powerful of the two arguments for sure. The second being that you reduce your own situational awareness. As Logical mentioned, however, your enemy is wary of situational awareness also. Instead of saying "smokes are bad because they reduce our situational awareness when we're inside them", use your intelligence that made you realize that to twist the smoke grenade into a weapon. If it reduces your situational awareness when you're in it, then it reduces your enemy's situational awareness when they're in it. It's not guarenteed to work every single time, but then again, name me one successful tactic that IS guarenteed to work every single time.

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MrJengles

A good thread to revive Mercenary.

I recently said smoke needs to last longer and be thicker to be as effective as it should, everyone seems to agree that point.

It's unfortunate smoke's effectiveness happens to diminish when people use bad graphic settings, quite ironic as the better players may be regular gamers and have a better computer, so it is infact newbies shooting you
Ok, not exactly true.

Different colours technically could help, white smoke isn't as good at concealing someone wearing black. Probably much less important than the previous problem. Still smoke with different colours (rather than the radar grenade) would have made the game a bit more...colourful. What, they ran out of coloured smoke by 2142?

The concealment effect is only useful if that concealment is more important than being as aware of your enemies as you would otherwise be. Which is why it is mostly used for assaulting.

Concealment


Throwing smoke which you promptly run into to obscure the opponents sight on your exact position. It is used with the sole intention of keeping you, and anyone else inside, alive for longer, most likely to allow you to move further, either to natural cover, or a flag.

The upside of this trick is exactly the same as it's downside. A cloud of smoke which is hard to see through and the enemy will all be aiming at.

The enemy are aiming at the smoke not you because they, hopefully, cannot see you. Bullets hit you less, rockets and grenades may not land as close as the enemy hoped. By taking less damage you might get to the desired position.

However, they are now all looking at the rather obvious smoke, which you currently reside in and they know it. A lot is being fired at you, although the chances of being hit by anything when your opponents vision is impaired even slightly, must be less than it would otherwise be.


Once at your destination you do not use the smoke. Behind a new piece of cover or at a flag you are mainly stationary or in a general area, smoke will now do more to obscure you're awareness of enemies and reduce your ability to fight back, than it will to help you. They all know where you are and without moving you are just begging for rockets and grenades. But the point is you have made it to where you wanted to be, hopefully a strategic location.

Yes, the smoke also lowers your awareness of the enemy while running...but you shouldn't be trying to see them, you should not even be aiming at them. The more you were to shoot back the less sprinting you would do, but you can easily smoke and run at the same time (as long as you don't develop a nasty chest cough that stops you in your tracks ).

If you were to fire...then you are simply fighting your way and not sprinting, which is entirely different. The better one is just down to which gets you past.


Blocking Enemy View


Throwing smoke on your enemies is a good thing when they are in cover:

Because, your squad knows where they are (or you can tell them).
You don't need to hit a person directly with a grenade or rocket to damage/kill them. Bullets will be hard put to hit their mark, but the smoke does not reduce the effectiveness of your squad's use of explosives by much at all while they are still. The radar, and the small area they are in, should easily get your shots close enough. This is even better if you were already looking at them and know exactly where a particular person is.

If the enemy moves while still behind the cover you follow them with the smoke.
If they move out of the cover they have lost that advantage and you don't need the smoke.

It follows that the true advantage is that the enemy, hopefully, cannot see you at all...as people have already said seeing out of smoke seems harder than seeing in. They need to hit you dead on with bullets so they are now down to lucky shots. Explosives have to at least be near you, the direction may be known well enough (assuming you're staying still while smoking/shooting), but their depth perception is reduced dramatically.
Admittably, the radar can cure this for their grenades if they're good enough, but rockets are renderred near useless as everyone has to aim at some object or another at distance; which they should no longer be able to see.

Thus, it is their awareness reduced considerably more than your own and this tactic only requires one or two people with smoke, supplies possibly needed, and the rest are free to rocket/grenade the opposition.


Smoke As A Distraction


Unfortunately with such dismal smoke grenades it is quite hard to fool squads with this tactic, especially TGers.
By throwing the smoke immediately nearby, anyone already shooting you will simply continue to do so and will know a squad has not moved into the smoke.

You may be able to distract people who were not already shooting at you: You must remain unseen behind cover and then distract those who will see the smoke before they see you. Because the smoke is very noticeable it will catch the opponent's eye; as they look, they now notice you. They have to aim at where you're going to be, most likely, the smoke. In that crucial moment you can change the direction you are running. As this only lasts a moment, you should move behind cover immediately.

Camp G gets a mention at this stage, it's a perfect example because before you move out of the uncap as Pac, it is hard to be seen. By throwing smoke, say, on the other side of the ramp and running up it at the same time: pretty much everyone looking at you is assuming you're going to use the smoke as cover and is aiming there. Having not seen you until now they have no idea how many may be following and you may invite more attention than you deserve and for a number of seconds (especially if they think you are a squad leader) you will be occupying some of their team while yours does something else.

You could use this to have your squad scatter at the moment multiple smokes go up, completely ignoring its supposed safety and unexpectedly, opting for natural cover instead. Although ending up partly seperated, perhaps two three's or three two's, it might be good at assaulting or moving out of a difficult situation, and anyone who dies will of course spawn on the squad leader (assuming he's up).

One batch of smoke and the trick is up. You cannot keep throwing it, you are not fooling anyone.
It is only in conjunction with cover that this tactic will help at all as you need cover to obscure you before smoking and immediately afterwards.
You are entirely aware of your enemies but they are taken by brief surprise.


A rewrite for you all...if you havn't dosed off

Mercenary90

You need to watch more samurai movies.

When I use smoke in open spaces, I usually don't use it as cover. For example, let's say there's a relatively wide corridor with cover on both sides and a Ganz on the far side of the corridor, while I am at the other side. If I wanted to advance on the Ganz and score a killing blow, it would be difficult at range (assuming I am an assault) because I would take lots of damage while darting from cover to cover. With the smoke in front of my path, the damage is slightly mitigated due to the increased difficulty of tracking me through smoke. And if I am correct, it is much more difficult to fire rockets through smoke accurately than it is to fire at the ground in the smoke.

If your enemy is a support, you'll probably be, for lack of a better word, screwed at close range building clearing even with the radar grenade. The support will have an IDS/scanner to detect your movements just as you have smoke radar to detect his/hers, while a LMG or HMG spews out more bullets in a shorter time, leading to more chances of having a hit indicator show up and aiding in more accurate aiming. The only exceptions I can think of is if the smoke thrower surprises the support, the support has no IDS/scanner, or if the support has a shotgun and does not know your location, in which case smoke provides only a slight advantage.

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He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed.