Browneyes and I are just starting up a new game. I usaualy just sell off the smoke grenades... But I was sondering if any one had ever found a tactic for making them usefull..

-Blade

They can actually cover a retreat very nicelyIf you chuck one a few squares behind you before you run, you can actually save the life of a soldier.

In X-Com Apoc, I use them quite often, but this is the UFO forum, so I'll stay clear of that

I use them the most right at the beginning when you deploy from your Skyranger! Sometimes the aliens will await your squad at the Skyranger's ramp and therefore manage to take out a soldier or two that way.

Just chuck a smoke at the ramp and deploy at your heart's contempt.

Well, it does reduce visibility for you and the aliens by a bit, and every little bit does count.

Let me relate a tale that doesn't have anything to do with smoke grenades, but it does involve a smoke cloud.

Picture if you will a snakeman battleship in a woodland forest area. To the south of it is a little hill. My foreward scout stupidly exhausts his TU's walking to the foot of the hill and walks right in front of a snakeman with a heavy plasma -- facing him to boot! I think it was about 8 tiles or so between the two. Instant death in most cases. Couldn't see it because it was standing underneath the battleship.

Further to the east of the scout is another soldier with a primed grenade. Just the ordinary cheap variety. Nothing special. I tried to throw the grenade at the snakeman but since there was a ceiling above it, and one leg of the battleship was in the way, I couldn't get into position to throw the grenade there without running out of TUs. Instead, I just threw the grenade between the alien and my soldier since explosions generally cause little smoke clouds, so I thought I'd use it as an impromptu smoke grenade. Sort of a last ditch attempt.

It shouldn't have worked, but it did. The snakeman completely missed the soldier and walked away -- turned its back on my soldier too.

See? Every little bit helps.

- NKF

Heh, NKF, you sound like a guy from the Twighlight zone or something like that.


I tend to use smoke grenades a little bit too. Not very often, but I've noticed that every once in a while I have to stock up my grenade stores at my base. More often in the first stage of the game than the last, though, but enough.

Wait... deploy at your heart's contempt? :dontgetit:

Basically, as a rule, I always have all my soldiers (except one) equipped with both smoke grenades and proximity grenades, in addition to timed grenades. I never know when an occasion will come up and I go, "Geez, I wish I had some smoke grenades right now." or something like that.

I use Heavy Lasers as my staple weapon, so I get some space for extra things like extra grenades.
Except of course for my two elite snipers - they get plasma rifles (cause it has such a good snap shot accuracy) and my commander traditionally carries around an autocannon. (I've a screenshot lying around somewhere of where the remains of the brain was, surrounded by lots of holes in the floor and fire from incendiary ammunition )

Sorry, but smoke granades s**ks big time!!

I've hearded the the alien vision range aand reactions are far better that ours, so chucking a smoke granade for cover is almost as nothing.
Well AFAIK, there is a lot of duddes that hates them, and the 80 items limit doesn't help much...... :hmmm:

i beg to differ. they cut the sight range dramatically, and when there are a load of evil aliens out there that will reaction shoot you if they see you.... it makes sense to drop a smoke grenade.

infact, i usually spend the first turn getting all of my troops to prime smoke grenades. then i get the point man to chuck one down the ramp, and end go.

so you throw one at the bottom of the ramp..

when do you use the rest?

whenever i need cover and there isn't any. like when crossing big fields. just like a popper, the only thing they see comming is an advancing cloud of smoke... from which many many nasty things are emmited :devil:

*shrug* Use them during the mission I suppose.

Smoke screens are not 100% effective, as many of you obviously know, but they still help. In a hot LZ with a lot of medium to long range snipers around, deploying from the Skyranger without a smoke screen generally nets you far more casualties than when you deploy with a smoke screen to temporarily conceal your units.

And if you're worried about the item limit, well, I don't think one or two smoke grenades would hurt the item table that badly. One to deploy and one or two others to use during the mission. What really uses up your item table are your guns and grenades.

And if you're REALLY desperate: smoke can be used to stun injured aliens and clone near-death soldiers to give them one more turn to live.

- NKF

Wow, all you guys are like gods... U have figured the whole game out and ure like experts at it... i bow down to you... :inlove:

what do you mean by "clone near-death soldiers"?

from what i can gather... there is a trick involving smoke that when you move an almost dead soldier into it and do something... not sure what though... a soldier corpse appears on the ground, and the soldier is still alive.

I'm not sure...I think that an unconscious soldier, with lots of fatal wounds and little health, will "die of fatal wounds" in the smoke...but there will be a corpse on the ground *and* an unconscious soldier "item"...which will die in one turn...so I think you get a single extra turn to heroically turn the soldier over to a month in the hospital rather than a grave...I think that's it...but don't quote me on that!

............

Well, all you do is send a soldier who is on his last turn to live into the smoke cloud and wait. Even a little smoke inhalation at such a critical level should knock the soldier out very easily. Armour might affect this though.

Two messages will pop up. One to say X has gone unsconscious, and X has died. That's how it normally goes, and the soldier will die.

But, if you get the messages in the reverse order, saying that X has died then X has fallen unconscious, there will be a dead soldier body on the ground (you will lose morale for that) but you will also find the actual soldier's unconscious body on the ground without any loss in health since the last turn. You can now use this turn to heal the soldier.

I'm going to have to compile a list of all the rather unconventional but interesting things you can do in the game some day.

It's amazing what you can find out when you notice something odd then try to recreate it. I found out about the cloning thingy by pure chance when my first soldier died in a smoke clouid. Going over to grab his unspent grenades and pistol, the two bodies that I found on the ground proved to be rather a puzzler.

Also, performing silly stunts sometimes tends to be rather rewarding. Like not too long ago, I wondered what would happen if I threw a grenade up at the ceiling. If you don't know, try it the next time you start UFO or TFTD. Doesn't have to be a grenade, you can use practically anything.

- NKF

well, no game is perfect and i'm sure some games are fiddled with bugs.

Far out i been gone for such a long time and this is the post that i will reply to first....

Well smoke grenades, the only use i found for them is for the wimpering sectoid race... as everyone should know if the white meter on a unit goes past the red meter (i think) then the unit goes unconcious, i found it usefull to capture sectoids this way instead of using stunners, however, most of the time it was useless cauz the unconcious aliens never had a alien containment center to go back home to!!! :angel:

I rarely use them. Usually to cover my exit of the craft in open terrain like desert, polar and sometimes at terror sites.

I've only ever used a smoke grenade once! When I first played the game, I used one to find out what it did and have never touched one since.