Yorktown - Smoke Strategies

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

I'm starting to play the Yorktown...and am having trouble recognizing good opportunities to use the smoke consumables.

Does anyone have a guide or advice on it?

I find I am forgetting it's there and then only using it once the match is decided...to prolong it.

I think I could be getting more out of it than I am.

[Wolfswetpaws]

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I'm starting to play the Yorktown...and am having trouble recognizing good opportunities to use the smoke consumables.

Does anyone have a guide or advice on it?

I find I am forgetting it's there and then only using it once the match is decided...to prolong it.

I think I could be getting more out of it than I am.

I'm still experimenting, since smokescreens are one of the tools in the "vision control" aspect of this game.
That being said ....

1.  I've seen the 'Bot CV's use them effectively to conceal their own hull, in Co-op battles.
2.  A low-health team-mate may appreciate you buying them some time to disengage from being shot at.
3.  I've experimented with using smoke to blind red-team ships during the Pinata Hunt mode.  Essentially, I'd drop smoke between the Pinata and the red-team ships, in an effort to prevent them from targeting the Pinata so that the green-team ships could farm the damage points.  Results were inconclusive.  So, for me it is still a conceptual work-in-progress.
4.  Having this tool in one's tool-box allows one's team to conserve DD & Cruiser smoke-screens (somewhat?) and/or provides smoke capability for ships not equipped with smoke generators.  So, yeah, it's nice to have. 
5.  One could conceal a push by dropping a curtain of smoke in front of advancing ships and then using planes to spot for them.  This would be similar in principle with an Italian ship making a smokescreen YOLO charge, but would vary in the actual practice of setting the smoke and could involve more than one ship.  Might be good to communicate with teammates about it beforehand.  

Those are my initial thoughts.  
I welcome further discussion.  🙂 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

1.  I've seen the 'Bot CV's use them effectively to conceal their own hull, in Co-op battles.

This I knew and use...I can play closer to the enemy using it and can speed up my impact.

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

.  A low-health team-mate may appreciate you buying them some time to disengage from being shot at.

I sometimes do this, but it takes discipline to keep track of who is actively trying to go dark...further practice required, I think.

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

I've experimented with using smoke to blind red-team ships during the Pinata Hunt mode.  Essentially, I'd drop smoke between the Pinata and the red-team ships, in an effort to prevent them from targeting the Pinata so that the green-team ships could farm the damage points.  Results were inconclusive.  So, for me it is still a conceptual work-in-progress.

I haven't tried this. Yorktown isn't great at spotting since my fighters don't spot like other CVs. I feel like doing this has a chance of merely blinding my own team.

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Having this tool in one's tool-box allows one's team to conserve DD & Cruiser smoke-screens (somewhat?) and/or provides smoke capability for ships not equipped with smoke generators.  So, yeah, it's nice to have.

This feels like it needs to be coordinated with individual ships, which is hard in randoms.

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

One could conceal a push by dropping a curtain of smoke in front of advancing ships and then using planes to spot for them.  This would be similar in principle with an Italian ship making a smokescreen YOLO charge, but would vary in the actual practice of setting the smoke and could involve more than one ship.  Might be good to communicate with teammates about it beforehand.  

It's a cool idea, but usually the push wants to be doing damage as they go...which means smoke firing penalties might negate the smoke curtain...

Still, food for thought depending on the composition of the pushers.

Thanks for the thoughts...Im enjoying listening to other ideas!

[desmo_2]

Be careful when dropping smoke on destroyers.  I have been happily undetected and spotting for my team mates when a "helpful" team mate drops smoke on me and blinds me.  I see a lot of players unintentionally blinding their own team with improper use of smoke drops.

I have also had players drop smoke on my battleship while I am engaged with the red ships.  While this is a nice gesture, smoke does little for me once I fire my battleship guns.

[Admiral_Karasu]

3 minutes ago, desmo_2 said:

Be careful when dropping smoke on destroyers.  I have been happily undetected and spotting for my team mates when a "helpful" team mate drops smoke on me and blinds me.  I see a lot of players unintentionally blinding their own team with improper use of smoke drops.

I have also had players drop smoke on my battleship while I am engaged with the red ships.  While this is a nice gesture, smoke does little for me once I fire my battleship guns.

Yeah, that's a good point. I haven't run into this often, I mean having a CV drop some on me. Probably just once and I was initially a bit surprised what was going on. Fortunately for me, one of the friendly CV's who did (yes it was a four CV game) dropped the smoke on when I had just entered the cap so it was mostly useful, and there were others who could spot the threats near me.

[Type_93]

Lay smoke for a gun boat DD that doesn’t have its own. Had a CV work with me in Marceau. He would lay smoke for me and spot while I Dakka dakka’d.  I paid him back by killing the sub hunting him. 

[Tricericon]

I'm likely to start the Yorktown push with the new set of dockyard missions later this week, so I'm very interested in this thread and have been doing other research on Essex line playstyle.

The most interesting theory is that the most effective baseline use of smoke is to be selfish, alternating between smoke and non-smoke squadrons and having the former deploy on takeoff, allowing you to take a very aggressive position just outside radar/torpedo rake range of the enemy and get your strike flight time down to minimal levels. I'm skeptical how well I can personally execute it.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

18 minutes ago, Tricericon said:

I'm likely to start the Yorktown push with the new set of dockyard missions later this week, so I'm very interested in this thread and have been doing other research on Essex line playstyle.

The most interesting theory is that the most effective baseline use of smoke is to be selfish, alternating between smoke and non-smoke squadrons and having the former deploy on takeoff, allowing you to take a very aggressive position just outside radar/torpedo rake range of the enemy and get your strike flight time down to minimal levels. I'm skeptical how well I can personally execute it.

Your smoke doesn't last as long as DD smoke, it feels...so you can't be permanently undetected.

I've been able to make aggressive plays by using the smoke screen, but I can't stay permanently too close to the enemy.