Info on VIRSS

[Weasel]

Ok, further from Shrapnel, I now understand what they are saying:

If a vehicle has VIRSS and a ATGM is fired the game runs a routine to determine if the VIRSS was sucessful in diverting the missle or not for that , and only that, missle. The "smoke" is, as you noted, just an animation so you know that VIRSS has fired. So "VIRSS" in the game is a code routine the game runs when a vehicle equiped with VIRSS detects a ATGM launch.

So what it boils down to is this:

In the real world VIRSS is a TI blocking smoke grenade, but the SP code will not allow that to be written in. So what they do is have the target fire a VIRSS and conduct a VIRSS vs MISSILE check, and then to let you know that this has occurred it will pop a generic smoke round as an FYI. If a second missile is fired, as happened to me, the target would have to launch another VIRSS to defeat it also, whether or not there is "smoke" in front of the vehicle facing the incoming missile.