From the Front - Smoke

[Dog Soldier]

Interesting post.

You can completely block LOS to the artillery units by placing two smoke rounds south of them (as in, 1 in each hex 1 hex below their positions). The central hex in between them is also forested, so it blocks LOS.

Yes, this will work too. There are many variations for the use of smoke. The downside for the Soviet units in this action is the smoke is being placed directly next to the Soviet guns, blinding them. This a big advantage to the panzers who will be able to rush the Soviet positions without any fear of defensive fire until they are point blank with the Soviet guns (adjacent hexes). While the artillery pieces might get off a shot when the panzers appear right on top of them, the fire from the panzers in their turn will be most destructive. Better to place the smoke out a small ways so that supporting units to the gun position would be able to open up on the advancing panzers.

A neat tactic is to place a defensive unit then have hidden units nearby to fire on approaching enemy attackers who only some of your force. The possibilities are enormous. These types of tactics were used historically by the Soviets at Kursk. Panzer commander to Commad HQ: "It looks like we have broken through and can roll straight over the few disorganized defenders fleeing in front of us." Loud explosions are heard. The radio connection goes to static back at command HQ. Hello? Hello?

The artillery units in your example are hidden until they fire due to the terrain they are in (they would also be hidden if they switch to T mode, provided they're not spotted whilst doing so). Screening them with smoke is primarily useful for allowing them to switch to T mode and either move out of their hex in the same turn or the next.

It is implicitly assumed for the purpose of this demonstration that the forward guns were spotted when the panzers cleared the ridge. There is a recon unit in the panzer line. I did not explicitly call this one out. Sorry if that confuses some people. There are several other ways to have spotted these guns by the time the panzers reach this area if you wish to confine your thinking to recognizing where I took the screen shot from. I am speaking more broadly about concepts and general tactics. I did mention in my post "the panzers are staring at the your positions".?

It's important to keep in mind that LOS is a cone of sorts, so units can see around "corners" in the sense that their LOS is not limited to straight or diagonal lines from their hexrow. That makes placing smoke further away from the units you want to screen/blind less efficient.

Not necessarily....OS follows the center of the hexes or the side of the hexes. LOS is not so block like as you describe.
When the visibility shoots up on a warm July day in 1943 over the open Steppes, you can see for four to five Km. To be dogmatic in doctrine and always place smoke adjacent to the enemy can then protect the enemy from your defensive fire. One has to weigh the merits of placement based on the situation. Consider LOS with other units who can direct artillery fire, direct fire opportunities from long range guns etc.

As an example, one might want to screen a stack of panzers from seeing a movement of T-34s moving from one dead ground position to another. Placing smoke, (if the guns firing the smoke have enough range) directly next to the panzers may ruin the chance to direct fire on those same panzers later in the turn by other forces. Such close proximity of smoke rounds to the enemy units throws away the point you make above about 'a cone of visibility'. The smoke rounds create their own shadow cones too. I recommend people open a game file, push some units around to create a contrived but possible situation then experiment with dropping smoke in different places to see the LOS effects. Or you can get a pad, pencil and straight edge and do the geometry off line. But that is not as much fun.

In some cases, units in clear terrain that have not moved are also hidden (up to a certain distance it seems). I'm not entirely sure how that rule works yet. In the Ozerovskii scenario, the same one as in the first example, the Soviet light tanks that function as triggers for their tank brigades spot my units before I can spot them, even though the light tank units are also in clear terrain. A special visibility rule might apply to Fixed units in clear terrain, I might've missed it.

No there is no special visibility rule. This works the same as it does in Squad Battles. The rational is the same.

The ability of a phasing unit to immediately have enemy units in LOS visible at the end of the unit's movement in PzC is not used at the Panzer Battles scale. The PzC visibility is based on two factors.

1. A PzC daylight turn is two hours long. Plenty of time to identify enemy units.
   
2. Units in PzC are huge when compared to single small T-70s or armored cars sitting quietly observing the terrain in front of them as in Panzer Battles. In PzC a full battalion or company can be seen regardless of terrain it is in. At the PzB scale this had to be altered to reflect the distances and size of the units.
   

The point made here is use historical tactics of the period. Recon units in the Panzer Battles games are very valuable assets, not just secondary units to run around 'bumping' into the enemy as they are used in PzC by some players. The recon units should proceed the main force when marching over long distances that are in some of the scenarios like the Ozerovskii scenario. This might mean they are out there, on their own, a full turn or half turn ahead of the main force. Such is the risk of being in the recon business in 1943 Russia.
March blindly without using recon units provided and see the results of that command decision.

I hope this post expands the discussion in this thread.

Dog Soldier