The game provides the option for all surface warships to generate Smoke as part of their movement phase. (Merchants and submarines can't generate Smoke). The purpose of smoke is to obscure other ships behind the smoke screen and, to a lesser extent, obscure the warship that is making the smoke. The smokescreen in the game is more effective than the historical naval smokescreen. It is intended as a game balancing device (perhaps to compensate for other defensive tactics or capabilities that the game does not simulate).

Smoke is generated during the movement phase by clicking the big button (bottom right) that is (unhelpfully) labelled "None". If you click it, it will change to Smoke. You have to remember to repeat this every turn you want to make Smoke. If you forget, your units will suddenly become unprotected, which could have bad consequences!. Choosing to make Smoke means that unit cannot fire or make any other attacks (including directing land based air attacks, or, for an aircraft carrier, readying aircraft etc).

Wind direction is vital when using smoke. Check the wind direction on the map or in the 3D view - the smoke will stream away from the warship in this direction. The wind direction has a major impact on the tactical effectiveness of smoke.

Larger ships appear to generate larger (longer, deeper) smoke screens.

Defensive Effects:

From my experience (I could be wrong) Smoke has the folllowing effects:

Standard effects

• Enemy units tend not to fire on smoke-protected units if there are other units available to fire on
  
• Enemy unit fire is less accurate against smoke-protected units
  
• Smoke is most effective when the wind is blowing across the bearing between the firing ship and target ship
  
• Smoke is least effective - possibly totally ineffective? - when the target ship is directly downwind of the firing ship, i.e. the smoke is blowing directly away from the firing ship.
  
• Smoke that is blowing directly toward the firing vessel is effective against guns but not very effective against torpedoes.
  
• I think these preceding points are because the AI fires into a random point or average point in the arc of the smoke as seen from its perspective. So if the smoke is crossing its line of fire that introduces a large error for a gun or a torpedo. If smoke is blowing directly toward a gun it introduces a large range error but not much of an angle error, and torpedoes are not so much affected by range errors.

Less obvious effects

• Smoke from friendly units will affect attacks from other friendly units if it blocks their line of sight to a given enemy unit. (This is one case where "friendly fire" *is* taken into account by the game.)
  
• Smoke works against submarine attacks. This may seem surprising but presumably the sub commander needs a periscope bearing to fire accurately and cannot fire on a sonar bearing alone. However it is not an absolute defence. The sub can and will take torpedo shots against a target covered by smoke, particularly at short range.
  
• Smoke appears to prevent you from making any attack on an enemy unit that is behind smoke (your smoke or the enemy's smoke), but that is not the case. You can still select and target the unit in the normal way even though it comes up as 'Smoke' in the top right hand part of the screen. You do not get any rangefinder (director) information and you do not get the "fall of shot" indicator on the main screen, but you can still see the fall of shot on the map. Thus it is possible to target enemy ships when they are behind smoke. It is also possible for enemy ships to target you when you are behind smoke!
  
• Smoke is a complete defence against air attacks (for the computer's units, anyway). A target emitting smoke or behind smoke cannot be selected for an air attack in the 3D view. There are some workarounds for this but in general it can't be done in the 3D view.
  
• However, it is possible for the player to target aircraft attacks using the map view. This ignores whether or not line of sight blocks the path to the target in 3D view. It may require you to press the Focus Target key (F2) after selecting the intended target in the map view.

• As noted, the wind direction is vital. At the start of a scenario, note the wind direction, and maneuver your ships so that the wind is to your advantage, not the enemy's, in laying smoke
  
• Destroyers or even corvettes, or damaged vessels that can no longer fight, can usefully provide smoke screens for other ships
  
• Smoke screens give an advantage to the side with superior numbers (rather than superior tonnage or guns). The more numerous side can afford to lay more smoke and use that to tactical advantage.
  
• Smoke screens are very useful for destroyers making fast approaches for torpedo attacks on capital ships. Combined with a zig-zag approach and especially if the target has other ships to fire at that aren't protected by smoke, this can reduce losses on the run-in and allow a close range torpedo attack that can cripple or destroy a capital ship. This is an authentic historical tactic and the reason destroyers were created (though it rarely was successfully carried out).
  
• Similarly smoke screens can be useful for destroyers approaching submarines to either kill them with a torpedo attack or a depth charge attack. As noted though, it is not an infallible defence against submarines.
  
• You can protect a line of ships by making sure their smokescreens overlap. As well as giving more/better protection to other ships, not making smoke, that are behind this smokescreen, this also protects the ships that are forming the smokescreen (except possibly the lead ship).
  
• One of the most effective ways to execute an approach under cover of smoke is to approach from upwind (windward) (from the enemy's point of view), with the smoke blowing across the heading to the enemy, with the furthest of your ships screening the closest, so that the closest ships are fully behind smoke and the furthest ship is at least partly obscured. This type of approach can be combined with a pincer movement that ends in overlapping criss-crossing torpedo attacks that the enemy can't evade.
  
• With practice once you have ranged in your guns you can get your firing ships behind a smokescreen and continue accurate fire while degrading the enemy's return fire. This is probably a cheat rather than a tactic but it can be an equaliser in an otherwise unequal gun battle.
  
• You can also attack directly through smoke, although this might be considered a cheat - see next section.

As noted above, the game UI discourages you from attacking through smoke, or makes it seemingly impossible, but it is not impossible. You can still access the map view. You can even still access the 3D close up view of the target by clicking the word 'Smoke' that appears where the unit name would normally appear. You will need to fire without the benefit of the range, elevation, fall of shot, and torpedo bearing estimates from your director crew. Therefore, if you are firing through smoke, it is best if you already have a good range solution before laying smoke. It is a good idea to write down the last information from your directors before laying smoke. Of course if it is the enemy laying smoke you might not have any choice.

Basically the technique used is the same as any map-based gunnery and torpedo aiming so I will not get into that discussion any further here. If you are already used to using your own estimates of range, elevation and torpedo bearing then there is nothing new for you in firing through smoke. In which case you already have a significant advantage over the computer player (AI), which can be further enhanced by using smoke.

Smoke for aircraft carriers

• In general aircraft carriers are vulnerable and it is a good idea to protect them with smoke screens. Particularly as the normal defensive measure (distance from the enemy) is rarely granted by the game when it spawns tactical starting positions.
  
• As aircraft carriers cannot ready, launch and recover aircraft while laying smoke, it is a good idea to assign at least one escort to each carrier in order to lay smoke on its behalf and protect it during these operations
  
• However the carrier itself must have a clear line of sight to the target in order to launch an actual air strike. At this time you need to turn off the smoke screen protecting the carrier. (Don't do this until the carrier is at a safe distance from enemy warships.)
  
• Exception - if you do not consider it cheating to attack through your own smokescreen, you can leave the smokescreens of other screening ships in place while executing your air attacks.

Aircraft attacks through smoke in 3D view

You may get in a situation when all enemy warships are emitting smoke, and cannot be selected for air attack. This can lead to a frustrating stalemate if air strikes or an aircaft carrier is your only effective combatant unit. It is possible to work around this if there are any other enemy units on the map not producing smoke (eg merchants) and particularly if those units are near to the enemy warship. You can select a unit that is not making smoke, and then use the angle of approach and point of attack sliders to actually direct the attack onto a warship that is making smoke. Depending on the proximity of the merchant to the warship, you can use bombs (if close) or torpedoes, and potentially even depth-charge a sub. I don't think it's possible to use guns or rockets in this way. If you are in this situation, make sure to leave the merchants alive until the very end, since they are vital to your ability to attack the warships.

Alternatively, select the targets for aircraft attack by using the map view, or for an already-selected target, by clicking on the top right where it says Smoke instead of the target.

Things I don't know the answer to (any help appreciated!):

• On the map you see denser smoke when two or more smoke screens overlap. I don't know if this denser smoke has any increased effect.
  
• Whether Smoke has any effects on detection or visibility, either on the detection ability of a ship generating smoke or the observability of a ship that is obscured by smoke.
  
• If an overlapping (longer) set of smokescreens is more effective than a single ship's smokescreen. Do firing ships fire into the average point or random point of the whole, combined smokescreen? Or just into the one smokescreen that is actually across their line of fire.

It is possible to exploit the turn-based mechanics of the game to cheat with smoke. There are a few examples of this.

• If you have an escort that moves before some of your ships, and another escort that moves after them, you can turn the smoke off from the first escort, fire through it, then turn the smoke on from the second escort to protect your ships from enemy return fire
  
• If you have a line of ships in motion, screening, and another line behind them, firing, if the firing ships move first, they can move into gaps in the smoke screen to fire through, then when the screening line moves, the firing ships are protected behind smoke again after they have fired.
  
• Both of these techniques can also be used with aircraft carrier strikes, as well as with gunnery.

Whether you can exploit these techniques or not depends on the order of movement of your ships allocated to you by the game. I'm not aware of any way to control this order, but if it could be controlled then the cheat would be much more effective (or rather, more reliable).

Also as noted in the Tricks and Tips section, accurate map-based gunfire or torpedo fire basically ignores the defensive effect of smoke, and so it could reasonably be considered a cheat. Aircraft attacking despite smoke, by targeting in the map view or selecting a previous target by clicking on 'Smoke', could be considered a cheat (in that it seems to frustrate the game's design intentions), or could be considered as historical and realistic, since aircraft are beyond-line-of-sight weapons, from the perspective of the launching ship, and don't even require a perfectly clear line of sight from the spotting ship.

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