[Rules] Lets talk about Smoke baby

[triangular_cube]

My first gripe is there is not enough smoke in the game. Smoke appears to have been utilized much more than APL lets on, especially to attacking forces. Enough of that.

I am reasonably sure that the rule is intended to be used as your first interpretation. That interpretation would be consistent with most SSRs about smoke availability.

Your new opponent has back-doored into a peculiarity of how the rule is written. While the number of turns is limited, the number of increments is not. So on a given "smoke turn", according to the rule as written, all available batteries could be firing smoke. With your example, with rule as written, there could be 4 smoke concentrations fired, because you are only using smoke on 1 turn. As Rocky often said, "Hokey Smokes!"

You opponent has a more practical interpretation, but that creates a bookkeeping issue.

(Is this opponent treadasaurusrex?)

Gosh, mentioned in dispatches by my august mentor and a ferocious opponent!

Here's another poorly written &unrealistic PG rule that desperately needs clarification & revision. It should be one smoke hex per firing unit, per turn, for whatever number of turns are specified in the rules. One still has to throw a 5 or more with two dice for the smoke to actually arrive on target. The bookkeeping might be annoying, but in most scenarios one has precious few mortars, OBA increments, or on-board artillery.

On a related topic, German and British tank units in WW2 typically used onboard smoke dischargers to help conceal their locations when displacing to another firing position. That's a fair amount of smoke for a platoon of vehicles to be able to discharge at once. However, this tactic is not reflected in even the optional PG rules.

Also, nearly all sides' tanks and many AFVs in WW2 also had smoke rounds they could fire in their combat loadouts. That use might really be too much to keep track of.

Its easy to fall into the trap of believing nothing is baked into the core rules. Units moving from hex to hex arent just nose to tail moving in a straight line. At the platoon level a fair amount of that nuance IS going to be baked in, but only the system designers can really say for sure WHAT all is baked in. To me, firing enough smoke to block out a 200M hex is going to be a much higher saturation, and of special note than a few odd smoke rounds from a tank unit. Consider the combined arms modifiers for assault, differing OF rules for tanks vs personel (in 4th), moving tanks having a negative OF AT value, etc.

Another thing to consider is that in special circumstances where units are truly moving with no available concealment or cover, SSR bake in an extra modifier (arctic front has units crossing ice suffering an extra +2 to direct fire and whatnot).

Not trying to attack you of course, and im sure plenty know more about smoke than me, but in a platoon level game I'm expecting more abstraction and a bit less chrome than you.

Just my opinion.