Smoke Grenade

General Information

The smoke grenade is means of creating a dense smoke screen between you and impending doom. Many commanders use this as a portable means of cover. Even commanders that do not make heavy use of the smoke grenade, may utilise them to safely disembark soldiers from the Skyranger, or to mask their retreat.

Smoke grenades are the only means of creating a dense cloud. Dust kicked up by ordinary explosive devices can act as a quick smokescreen, but they do not provide as much protection as the smoke grenades.

A large number of X-COM Commanders are not confident in the smoke grenade's abilities and choose to forgo them entirely. This is fine, as the smoke grenade need not be used in every event. But with a bit of practice and some understanding of how the smoke grenades work, they add yet another valuable tool to the strategy toolbox.

Usage Notes

• The most popular use of smoke grenades is to throw one at the base of your transport's ramp on the first turn of deployment (do not deploy until Turn 2, after the grenade has detonated). This will mask your soldiers' movements as they emerge from the transport, greatly reducing the chance of their being killed by as-yet-unseen aliens.
• The smoke cloud produced by a smoke grenade provides the best screen within the first three turns after the detonation. The initial visibility through the cloud is 4-6 squares. Though the initial cloud may look small, it provides the heaviest cover because the smoke particles are tightly packed together. Over time the smoke will spread out and cover a larger area, but by then the smoke will have grown thin and units and allies alike will be able to see much farther through the smoke than when it was a tight mass. A good rule of thumb is that every turn allows the alien (and you) to see one tile further into the smoke, until all the smoke particles clear.
• For best results, place the smoke grenade between yourself and the attackers. Placing it on yourself or on the units you wish to blind does not work so well because the other side will only have half as much smoke to look through.
• Be warned that the smokescreen produced is not an impenetrable barrier. It will hinder visibility not just for your enemies, but for your allies as well. However, this trait allows the use of scout/sniper tactics over short distances or in confined spaces: if you spot an alien while wandering through smoke, move back one square out of its visual range again and then fire at it. It will not return fire. (See reaction fire triggers for more details.)
• As well as just getting out of the Skyranger alive you can use smoke effectively for advancing across open terrain. Either drop them in front of the aliens, if their positions are known, or just keep throwing them in front of you and advance inside the smoke cloud.
• Smoke greatly reduces the pain of advancing across open ground without cover and taking inevitable casualties.
• Smoke allows you to deal with the aliens piecemeal, and concentrate your fire.
• Conversely, on defence you can use smoke to force the aliens to engage with you piecemeal, not able to bring all their firepower to bear at once. Throw smoke grenades into the middle ground so that attacking aliens emerge into visual contact only one or two at a time, unsupported, at a close range where you can kill them easily.

Stunning with Smoke

• Smoke grenades can double as method of stunning units. There are two methods.
• The first method simply involves choking units in dense clouds of smoke. Be warned however that smoke is filtered by armour. So the more armour the target has, the less likely it will choke. Rank and difficulty influence armour greatly - superhuman commanders are less likely to fall unconscious than beginner soldiers.
• The second method of stunning with smoke is to saturate all units that you want to stun with smoke. Then, set off as many incendiary effects as you can. It doesn't matter what you hit as long as the target, or targets, you want to stun are in smoke. Due to the odd nature of fire, stun damage is done to all units standing in smoke every time an incendiary explosion occurs. Use the Auto Cannon for the best effect! (Note: this claim is currrently in dispute. IC explosions do trigger stun damage to soldiers standing in smoke, but apparently not to aliens in smoke.)
• There can only be so much smoke and fire on the map at any given time. So if your smoke grenades appear to be duds, wait until the fires burn out or until some smoke settles down.
• Smoke will extinguish a raging fire. However, a unit fire cannot be snuffed by smoke.