Smoke Screen

💨 Smoke Screen

When the BTR takes heavy damage, it can deploy a defensive smoke screen — a dense cloud that envelops the hull, breaks line of sight, and buys it time to survive. Think of it as the tank's panic button.

All settings live in the SmokeScreen block of a preset (field table in Configuration Reference).

"SmokeScreen": {
    "Enabled": 1,
    "TriggerAtHealth": 0.65,
    "RepeatEvery": 0.20,
    "MaxDeployments": 3,
    "Cooldown": 12.0,
    "Duration": 16.0,
    "EmitterCount": 5,
    "HunkerDown": 1,
    "AccuracyWhileSmoked": 0.35
}

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🔧 How it works

• The BTR watches its own health. When it drops below TriggerAtHealth (a fraction, 0.65 = 65%), it pops a smoke screen.
• RepeatEvery lets it pop again at lower thresholds. With 0.20 and a 65% first trigger, it fires at ~65%, ~45%, ~25%. Set RepeatEvery: 0 for a single, one-time screen.
• It's limited to MaxDeployments total (its "smoke grenades"), with at least Cooldown seconds between them.
• Each cloud lasts Duration seconds and is built from EmitterCount emitters spread along the hull, so it wraps the whole vehicle and follows it.

With the default settings (TriggerAtHealth: 0.65, RepeatEvery: 0.20, MaxDeployments: 3), the thresholds look like this:

flowchart LR
    D(["💥 Takes damage"]) --> H{"HP below current<br/>threshold?"}
    H -->|No| W(["keep fighting"])
    H -->|Yes| CD{"Cooldown over &<br/>deployments left?"}
    CD -->|No| W
    CD -->|Yes| S(["💨 SMOKE SCREEN"])
    S --> HK{"HunkerDown = 1?"}
    HK -->|Yes| B["🛑 Brakes + fires blind<br/>(AccuracyWhileSmoked)"]
    HK -->|No| K["keeps maneuvering"]
    B --> N["next threshold −RepeatEvery"]
    K --> N
    style S fill:#5a5a6e,color:#fff
    style D fill:#8b1a1a,color:#fff

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Hunker down

While smoked, if HunkerDown is on, the BTR brakes and fires blind at reduced accuracy (AccuracyWhileSmoked) — it can't see through its own smoke any better than you can. This turns the smoke into a genuine defensive lull rather than a free kill window.

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🎛️ Tuning

Want…	Do this
A single desperate screen near death	TriggerAtHealth: 0.4, RepeatEvery: 0, MaxDeployments: 1
Frequent, aggressive smoking	Raise MaxDeployments, lower Cooldown and RepeatEvery
Denser cloud (at some FPS cost)	Raise EmitterCount
It to keep fighting accurately in smoke	Raise AccuracyWhileSmoked, or set HunkerDown: 0
Off entirely	Enabled: 0

💡 Example — one panic screen at 50%

"SmokeScreen": {
    "Enabled": 1,
    "TriggerAtHealth": 0.5,
    "RepeatEvery": 0,
    "MaxDeployments": 1,
    "Duration": 16.0
}

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⚡ Performance

The smoke is a custom particle spread across several emitters. EmitterCount: 5 is a good balance of density vs. frame cost. If you run many BTRs at once and notice a dip during firefights, lower EmitterCount or Duration.

Note

Fully hiding the hull silhouette isn't practical without a heavy FPS hit (soft particle billboards + overdraw), so the shipped default aims for a dense, believable screen that still performs. See Performance and Logs.