It will be a surprise to none of you who saw our previous announcement (at Christmas) that our next patch will include coloured smoke grenades for marking locations and targets. They weren't supposed to be revealed until now, but what can I say? Sometimes the guys get a little bit over-excited.

Those of you who've played around in the editor might remember already seeing a "red smoke grenade" as a useable item but while that was simply a regular smoke grenade with a red tint, these are a different beast altogether.

Our coloured smoke comes in two flavours - red for the Allies and orange for the Axis. The smoke these give off will "plume" rather than "cloud" and is therefore useless at concealment, but great for being visible from a long distance away. We're not forcing you to choose between classic "grey" smoke and these though - they occupy a separate inventory slot so you can carry both simultaneously.



In addition to a bright plume of smoke, a thrown smoke grenade will also mark a rally point on the map in the same manner as the binoculars' alternate fire does. To avoid confusion however, there can only be one rally point at a time per team, so if you throw a second grenade or mark a location with the binoculars (a rally point only, not an artillery target), the displayed rally point will change to reflect that.

By default, all Officers and Sergeants will be issued with 2x coloured smoke. Regular soldiers get none, however they can still scavenge them off the bodies of the fallen.

Nice!! But does this mean that a random player who somehow gets some coloured smoke grenades can move the rally point that his officer has set?

wow these are gonna be awesome! when they coming out?

One problem will be people using for the wrong reasons

As you say people could use them for the wrong reason, they could also be used as a diversion, throw a smokegrenade to mark a spot, enemy would see this and obviously know that is your rally point. BUT tell your team to got to another location then lay arty on the smoke ?????.

I did consider preventing scavenged grenades from marking rally points, but in the end I decided against it, figuring that the mark was simply an easier to pinpoint symbolisation of the clearly visible smoke. Should there be some overwhelming community (or tester) feedback in favour of officer marking only, then that would be something I could change, but so far no one has seemed particularly bothered by the unrestricted nature of the marking.


Not to mention what can happen if you manage to steal some enemy coloured smoke...

Very neat, it'll fit perfectly in scenarios.

On the test DH the German one is called "orange smoke grenade". Shouldn't be called Rauchsichtzeichen Orange 80,160,350 or some similar abbreviation?

Here are four pics of it:

That's because the names are still placeholders. If you want to discuss aspects of the test build, please do it in the tester forums.

Sorry about that

As far as people using them for the "wrong" things...anything in the game can be used wrongly.

REMEMBER, we have a little feature called voice.

If someone throws a colored smoke grenade, they can tell the rest of their side WHY.

For Example:

"Enemy breaking through at the Red Smoke"

"WE are trying to break through at the Red Smoke. Let's go!"

"Enemy tank hiding at the Red Smoke, send a Bazooka man"

WITH an explanation, the colored smoke can communicate a great deal. Without an explanation, its just a mystery that can be easily ignored. Or, you can assume its a rally point and respond in your own way.

The real question is?

How much longer do we have to wait for said patch at best estimate and yes I did say estimate...

Day, days, week, month, or months?

Yes the answer can be that vague to get the juices flowing for us hard core DH folks...

I hope they don't release it until they put in some type of zoom for the infantry role.

Zoom for infantry. Who needs that? I love pixel hunting.

/s

I hope.