Well thats a separate issue then. AFAIK the mortar ht smoke is comparable to other mortar smoke?
The gimmick of giving MORE smoke to allies that eirr has developed into, ended up being dumb. Remove casualty smoke , remove smoke grenades, smoke on fireup and smoke offmaps. Let the goddamn mortars who dont buff their surrounding units or fight "directly" supply this very precious resource.
I mean jesus it's like some kind of gigantic ganja field descends to protect the allied blob w/bob marley approving the sky sometimes.
Here's how it should look:
Brits - mortar, cct (shared cooldown, medium cooldown and 2 uses) and riflenades supply smoke
Wehr - 1 doctrine tank choice and mortar supplies smoke
Americans - mortar and officer
PE - Mortar ht (all doctrines), Luft riflenades and humme smoke barrage (SE)
You can also get smoke barrages on Hotch Stukas with SE too by the way. Currently Hummel smoke barrage is kind of a joke if you expect it to accurately smoke a front for frontal assault. This is probably due to scatter and the fact that players are often at long range, however in the end you'll have a better chance using smoke barrage to spot units in FoW or try to knock down low health buildings while waiting for normal barrage to cooldown. If anyone is going to bother to buff Hummel smoke barrage I'd recommend giving each shell a bigger smoke radius.
I agree that it seems that smoke seems a bit overdone for a number of doctrines, but it is a sort of a derailment when trying to sort out some of the current problems with PE. Complaints of the doctrine system in turn are also a sort derailment of this thread. In terms of effort and energy, does it make sense to revert 2-3 factions to bring PE back in line or tweak PE to bring it back up in line with the current state of the other 3?