Smoke Screen

[Ruan]

The current system used for Smoke Screen is pretty much  a copy and paste from WoWS. It's currently limited to DD and CL class ships (not sure if TB class vessels can use it off the top of my head). With a timer, cool down and basic interaction with ships and the environment. I believe this to be such a missed opportunity and that this game deserves a more accurate representation of smoke.

It's in my opinion that smoke can be modeled as it would be used in RL naval tactics and behave as you would expect smoke to. But I also understand that this is a game and possible draw backs should be placed on it's use so long as it's logical. So I'd like to purpose some changes to smoke with the overall goal of making it more accurate and more interactive.

• All ships should have access to smoke. Limiting smoke to 2/3 classes of ships isn't even remotely accurate. Smoke is typically fuel oil injected directly into the smoke stack causing it evaporate and cause thick smoke. In terms of the game smoke could be a optional module added to a ship, this would work as there are different methods of deploying smoke and each method had draw backs on how they effect the engines and how the smoke acted once deployed. For example smoke generated by adding oil directly into the boiler caused black smoke that would rise quickly and restricted air flow into the boilers and lowered engine performance. Smoke can also be tied to smoke stacks. If the stacks are damaged or destroyed the ship could lose the option to deploy smoke.
• Smoke currently covers a circle around the deploying ship that hangs around for a bit. I'm not sure if the engine can handle realistic smoke physics. So in the event it can't. The Smoke circles should be quite small at first deployed at the position of the deploying ship. The circles then expand over time till they dissipate (vanish). In addition the circles drift in the direction of the wind. The ship deploying the smoke cannot be hidden by the smoke just deployed as the smoke would require a little bit of time to expand to provide sufficient coverage to hide a ship. Players would need to take into account wind direction and speed. Weather such a squalls could effect smoke as well. They would also need to take into account screening ships vulnerability as smoke doesn't cover the deploying ship. 
• Smoke stacks with multiple ships generating smoke. In other words smoke circles stack with each other to provide better effects. A single ship deploying smoke could cause smoke thick enough to throw off aim while multiple smoke circles can cause a greater effect to aiming and even block LOS. It goes without saying smoke works both ways. An idea could be that a ship within radio range that still has LOS could provide limited firing data to ship that do not have LOS. While radar provides a counter to smoke nearly completely.

That's all I got for now. What do you guys think?