5"/38 WP/Smoke Rounds

[EagleDNY]

I would be awful nice to be able to lay a smoke screen for those poor sods crawling their way to the beaches in an LVT.   The 5" gun had a WP round for just such a contingency - how about giving us a few? 

[ONTOS]

I'm not sure White Phosphous (WP, Willy Pete) was used as a smoke screen, as WP burns with great heat. I believe the smoke rounds were chemical, but not harmful.

[EagleDNY]

Smoke by any name is needed.  I can understand the old argument against it - it hurt frame rates too much.  But folks, the graphics power of even the most basic graphics cards are lightyears ahead of where they were just a few years ago - we can deal with smoke and it would add an even greater dimension to the game if it cut down the icon ranges of GVs that were in it. 

[Zimme83]

WP is common in smoke grenades. But the LVT 4 can carry a lot of smoke grenades and can create a smoke layer pretty quick.

[Sabre]

+1! It's useful for more than just getting the LVTs feet dry. A surface action tactic for disengagement was for the tin-cans to lay down a smoke screen behind a fleet as it retires, or between opposing fleets, to allow ships with smaller guns (and thus, reach) to get within gun or torpedo range of a heavier opponent. I'm not sure what the frame-rate hit might be, but we already have smoke for GVs; I'm not sure it would be any worse if a ship was throwing them instead of a GV. Of course, there's all kinds of mischief you could cause. You could lay down smoke over an entire airfield, disrupting flight and ground gun ops.

Part of the problem with fleets in AH is they all are created equal. Same speed, same main/secondary guns, same armoring (or rather, no armoring to speak of; just a damage rating). Makes sense for the MA, but lacks the nuances of real naval combat.

[Volron]

Smoke for a GV is tiny, and really doesn't cover super well compared to what can be laid down by a fleet.  I would love to see fleet smoke added, but I won't hold my breath on it either.

[EagleDNY]

Part of the problem with fleets in AH is they all are created equal. Same speed, same main/secondary guns, same armoring (or rather, no armoring to speak of; just a damage rating). Makes sense for the MA, but lacks the nuances of real naval combat.

Agree but we can wish for better can't we? 

[Sabre]

Agree but we can wish for better can't we?

Absolutely! That's why it's called the "Wishlist" forum. I don't know for certain if ship armor is modeled to any extent in AH, but if it is, it's likely pretty rudimentary (not a criticism; it is primarily a flying game). I get the impression that ship damage is simply an accumulation of weight of ordinance that hit it. As a rule of thumb, a battleship's side-hull armor belt thickness was about equal to the diameter of it's main guns; deck armor was significantly less. So, it could shrug off point-blank 5" shells all day long without taking critical damage (though they could start fires that could be of concern), but plunging shells might actually penetrate. Smaller stuff would barely scratch the paint. Armor-piercing rounds versus HE (for gun ammo and bombs) would also make a big difference in terms of type and severity of damage. Finally, the variation in the top speed of opposing fleets was a significant factor in how an engagement played out. Just hoping eventually the game evolves to a more realistic representation.