As we all know mortars are a very powerful asset for supporting your team in the open. But when your team is assualting, enemies dug in inside a building there's not much you can to kill the infantry inside the building.
Solution: Use smoke rounds to cover your team's advance.
Problem: Mortar rounds against most good defensive apartment buildings are pretty much useless.
I've illustrated it here: Imgur
I initially had this idea a week back or so but the end of this thread made think about making a suggestion.
I do, and I think you will agree on that this will make the smoke rounds more desireable. But what I don't know is how realistic this. I've found this picture on wikipedia but that's real old. Other than that I didn't really find anything. (But to be honest I didn't did THAT much of a research).
Coding wise i guess it wouldn't be that much of a trouble?
Mortar airburst smoke rounds
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Ninja2dan
- Retired PR Developer
- Posts: 2213
- Joined: 2007-10-29 03:09
Re: Mortar airburst smoke rounds
Smoke munitions fired from artillery will initiate in the air, in order to ensure they spread by the time they hit the ground. For shells, such as 105mm/155mm/etc, smoke munitions are "base ejecting" which means that prior to the shell impacting the ground the base of the shell opens up to release multiple smoke canisters. For mortars, smoke munitions are "bursting" rounds which means that upon fuze initiation, a small bursting charge causes the outer shell to rupture and release the smoke material, such as felt wedges (WP).
For both munition types, their contents are released above the ground in order to promote the spread of the contents, which allows for greater coverage. Some of the earlier munitions simply detonated upon impact, showering only the nearby area with WP which limited their coverage area and effectiveness.
But the components of the shells that actually generate the smoke will of course fall to the ground, where the smoke is generated. Smoke munitions from artillery or hand grenades are designed for screening purposes, unlike vehicle smoke grenade systems which are designed for a short-duration defensive smoke screen. As mentioned in another topic recently, vehicle smoke grenades will detonate in the air shortly after being fired, in order to rapidly provide an effective visual barrier. But these types of smoke screens are very short in duration as well as coverage area.
As for air-bursting of smoke munitions, that would be largely ineffective. For HC-based munitions, the smoke itself is dense and will quickly "sink" to the ground where it will linger and float around. For WP-based munitions, there will be a very brief and limited amount of smoke at the point of detonation, but the material that generates the smoke will quickly fall to the ground, bringing with it the source of the smoke. In other words, an air-bursting smoke munition will create only a small and limited-duration area of smoke coverage in the air, while the majority of the smoke sinks to the ground.
Unfortunately, the use of smoke munitions is largely ineffective against OPFOR that is in elevated terrain. In order to screen ground forces at a lower elevation, the smoke must be employed closer to those forces, which limits their distance of travel while screened. Generally, you aren't able to effectively use smoke screens against an enemy in elevated positions.
An alternative option is to use suppressive fires at the elevated enemy, which may make them drop their heads down long enough to give troops on the ground time to move short distances. But it's not nearly as effective as smoke. Elevation is often considered a tactical advantage for reasons such as this, among others.
You could still make an unrealistic air-bursting smoke system, but then how do you determine at which height the smoke will burst? If it's an 8-story building, which floor is the enemy on? How do you plan to cause the shell to burst at that height, instead of blocking the 3rd floor or 7th floor? And if the shell did burst on the 8th floor, what's to prevent the enemy from just firing from the 5th floor instead where the smoke isn't blocking their view? As you can see, even an "unrealistic" air-burst smoke would be fairly ineffective once people figured out ways to exploit it.
Some of the real-world tactics used in MOUT combat are simply unavailable in PR. Things like being able to blow open holes through walls to create loopholes isn't possible right now, and having to create destructible wall partitions would suck balls at this point. Weapons fire, especially from large-caliber heavy weapons and vehicle-based weapon systems, isn't able to penetrate walls either. What you DO have is frag grenades, which can be tossed into rooms prior to clearing them, which does help a bit against entrenched enemies. Flash/concussion grenades will work, and you can still use smoke hand grenades for some building-clearing methods.
For both munition types, their contents are released above the ground in order to promote the spread of the contents, which allows for greater coverage. Some of the earlier munitions simply detonated upon impact, showering only the nearby area with WP which limited their coverage area and effectiveness.
But the components of the shells that actually generate the smoke will of course fall to the ground, where the smoke is generated. Smoke munitions from artillery or hand grenades are designed for screening purposes, unlike vehicle smoke grenade systems which are designed for a short-duration defensive smoke screen. As mentioned in another topic recently, vehicle smoke grenades will detonate in the air shortly after being fired, in order to rapidly provide an effective visual barrier. But these types of smoke screens are very short in duration as well as coverage area.
As for air-bursting of smoke munitions, that would be largely ineffective. For HC-based munitions, the smoke itself is dense and will quickly "sink" to the ground where it will linger and float around. For WP-based munitions, there will be a very brief and limited amount of smoke at the point of detonation, but the material that generates the smoke will quickly fall to the ground, bringing with it the source of the smoke. In other words, an air-bursting smoke munition will create only a small and limited-duration area of smoke coverage in the air, while the majority of the smoke sinks to the ground.
Unfortunately, the use of smoke munitions is largely ineffective against OPFOR that is in elevated terrain. In order to screen ground forces at a lower elevation, the smoke must be employed closer to those forces, which limits their distance of travel while screened. Generally, you aren't able to effectively use smoke screens against an enemy in elevated positions.
An alternative option is to use suppressive fires at the elevated enemy, which may make them drop their heads down long enough to give troops on the ground time to move short distances. But it's not nearly as effective as smoke. Elevation is often considered a tactical advantage for reasons such as this, among others.
You could still make an unrealistic air-bursting smoke system, but then how do you determine at which height the smoke will burst? If it's an 8-story building, which floor is the enemy on? How do you plan to cause the shell to burst at that height, instead of blocking the 3rd floor or 7th floor? And if the shell did burst on the 8th floor, what's to prevent the enemy from just firing from the 5th floor instead where the smoke isn't blocking their view? As you can see, even an "unrealistic" air-burst smoke would be fairly ineffective once people figured out ways to exploit it.
Some of the real-world tactics used in MOUT combat are simply unavailable in PR. Things like being able to blow open holes through walls to create loopholes isn't possible right now, and having to create destructible wall partitions would suck balls at this point. Weapons fire, especially from large-caliber heavy weapons and vehicle-based weapon systems, isn't able to penetrate walls either. What you DO have is frag grenades, which can be tossed into rooms prior to clearing them, which does help a bit against entrenched enemies. Flash/concussion grenades will work, and you can still use smoke hand grenades for some building-clearing methods.
