Warning Smoke

[SnowBlaZeR2]

What is it's purpose? On some of the abilities it makes them pretty much useless against anything but hard targets. Even the AI moves everything out of the way as soon as you activate anything, and it's a huge waste of resources. Are they intended to really only be useful against stationary targets?

[Darkbladecr]

The purpose is to be able to avoid attacks. Imagine every strike was like a V1, but there isn't a massive wait. You could get your sniper to walk around cloaked and take out whole armies because they didn't see the Arty coming down.

[SnowBlaZeR2]

I understand that, but it's still a bit ridiculous to be able to avoid every single attack, especially with what they cost. It's a waste of resources as is, and I rarely bother with indirect attacks any more. Also, I don't know about taking out whole armies. If they are massed together, yes, but the abilities cost enough that you can't just run around calling in off map strikes every 5 seconds. If that's the case, why not just increase the cost or recharge times? I think that would be a better alternative than giving the enemy a clear signal of what's coming.

[Darkbladecr]

For competitive play this is the only fair way. It has been tried and tested there were a lot if complaints in the CoH2 alpha and beta when they reduced the visibility of the arty. And fair enough its extremely annoying to lose units that you can't avoid. It may not be whole armies directly, but an arty takes out the bulk of your AT and you see a couple Type 59D or Bradleys coming towards you, then you have pretty much lost.

[SnowBlaZeR2]

I don't really see how giving your enemy a warning to move their units is fair, either. I have a tendency to mass my units, and I deserve to lose them every time I do that. If you have your AT massed, and your opponent is able to wipe them out with one strike and overrun you with Bradleys, you deserve to lose the game. I get what you're saying, and I don't think it's that bad versus human opponents because they can't watch the whole map. Still happens though, and it kind of negates any desire to use that ability. The doctrine abilities are supposed to be game changers, and letting the opponent know what's coming kind of takes away from that.

The AI is what is extremely annoying. It's instantaneous and absolute when you call in a strike. The smoke hits and every unit moves out of the way immediately. Why not at least change hardcore mode? Would it be possible to fix the AI so it's more random instead of every time?

[YankeeSamurai]

I would definitely support a removal of warning smoke for hardcore mode, and I'm sure many other hardcore mode players would as well.

[South]

I would definitely support a removal of warning smoke for hardcore mode, and I'm sure many other hardcore mode players would as well.

Agreed. I think it's because of different style of combat - "combat of units" and "combat of firepower".
In normal mode of CoH, every unit is precious, because once it is lost, it will take you a long time to rebuild, and for this reason, a mass destruction will sentense the victory.
However in hardcore mode, units become much easier to product and destroy, for this reason firepower becomes much more important than units. In this case, I think barrige without warning smoke will be better.

[I_am_a_Spoon]

Units in hardcore aren't any cheaper and don't build any faster...

OT: Sound cues would be the best of both worlds, but I doubt they'd be easy to set up.

[Darkbladecr]

Global sounds that all players hear is actually pretty easy to setup, its just finding the right sounds.

[South]

Units in hardcore aren't any cheaper and don't build any faster...

OT: Sound cues would be the best of both worlds, but I doubt they'd be easy to set up.

Anyway they dies faster..that's why hardcore mode called "hardcore".