I'd question whether smoke shells or flares have a significant place in an operational level game.
Considering the extensive use of smoke on the German (maybe starting in 1941 or 1942), the Russian (used throughout the war afaik), the British (mainly in North Africa, and during Cobra - afaik), the Russian and the US side (maybe starting around fall 1944, especially during Market Garden and in the Hürtgenwald battles), it is clear that defensive and offensive smoke was a vital tool.
Yes, the game is an operational level game.
Large scale smoke screens, just like large-scale artillery attacks, both as preparative strikes right before the actual ground offensive, were ordered, requested, approved or facilitated by the operational commander/command. While local commanders could request smoke (from attached and subordinated units or from units held back by higher echelons) as tactical aid, large scale smoke was definetely a tool available to (and used by) the operational commander.
Rommel ordered smoke (when enough smoke rounds were available) to allow German infantry troops to approach enemy positions (desert terrain is pretty flat and rarely offers cover, in the main at least, so an infantry soldier is a pretty easy target in the desert) at all.
The Brits in the desert did the same (and - thanks to their excellent supply situation - they used smoke excessively, as the translation of the report of the 21st Panzer Division above demonstrated), or shifted to night attacks, as daylight attacks without smoke produced a lot of casualties in the open terrain. Later in the war, Russian pincer movements and attacks with multiple waves would have turned out to be the bone crusher attacks performed by the Russians in 1941 and 1942, without proper use of smoke.
On top of that, the game allows for detaching units. While the friendly AI performs best at the Regimental level, imho, the game allows to control individual Coys.
This actually makes the game more realistic, of course, since WWII-armies did not deploy their regiments in a "napoleonesque" manner, means where whole regiments in rectangle formations were facing each other, with arty guns firing from behind, - in WW II - single Coys needed to cover sectors or strongpoints, were on occupation duty or sent to screen enemy lines. Very realistic, IF the player makes use of the feature.
But since there are these underlying tactical elements in the game, the game needs to cater for (some of) these, too as there are not just entire divisions or regiments roaming on the screen.
Sidenote: said:
With the current organization of the estabs the game also does not correctly represent the German use of IG Coys. The Coys were split, (all of) their high calibre (field) guns were combined and then employed and controlled by the regimental comannder - either to support individual Bns, or to fulfil other tasks set by the regimental commander - , the le.IG 18 guns were then supposed to either provide general support for the Bn or to give direct support to particular Coys. The corresponding field manual put this as option, but this was actually the most widely used type of employment.
While this might sound like going too much into detail for an operational game, this absolutely lovely and detailed game creates ahistoric moments: IG Coys did not bring their field guns to or closer to the frontline, just their le.IG 18 guns, if at all. Only when strongpoints could not be cracked, and when arc or even direct fire from the le.IG 18 failed, when support from the artillery regiment was unsuccessful or not available, only then (when everthing else failed) the Germans would bring their IG coy field guns closer to the front. This also happened when no AT guns were available, during enemy tank attacks.
I outlined the distances (from the frontline) at which artillery pieces were placed behind defensive (static) frontlines in a different thread somewhere.
If the game would allow to form new units (say Kampfgruppen, forming new arty groups - like the IG distribution described above, Feldersatz units as reserve pool from which the player can draw ON THE FLY, etc.), which would be on my personal wishlist, the player could decide for himself how he would want to employ such pieces (current full IG coy, or splitting them - where a part would be directly attached to the Regimental HQ, and the rest kept on the Bn level). Until then, the scenario creator has to do it for him.
While each flare fired from units on the frontline was probably able to illuminate a strip of say 80-150 meters (descending from a height of 150 meters), which would be my personal guess, a flare dropped from planes or fired from artillery pieces (height 150-300 meters) probably illuminated a larger strip. While this can be abstracted to some extent (it doesn't have to be rendered, a glow/illumination circle on the map would be some "luxury" thing), the game could actually still consider visibility changes in the "nightfighting code", means there could be a routine that would change the modifiers when flares would be fired (say on enemy contact and if the enemy INF unit is inside the effective weapon range; duration 15 seconds and 30 seconds, with an X amount of flare rounds carried by the troops). Flares fired (or ending up) over dense woods would only illuminate the edges, but not the soldiers inside the woods.
Except for say encounters between US and Japanese forces, and between US and British paras and the Germans during the initial para landings in Normandy, where in quite some battles only muzzle fire, tracers or explosions illuminated the scenes, night encounters - in the main - were not affairs where two opposing elements wandered around blindly.
There are documents/infos detailing how many flare guns and how many rounds a given German Coy had as initial loadout, and there are probably similar documents from other Armies.
Now, smoke can't be abstracted. It would have to be rendered, and imho it should be in the game.
The absence of smoke is like a missing function, to me.
When people started to ask for "off-board" smoke in the Matrix forums, back then, I was not a fan of the idea, as I also doubted that an operational game would need smoke.
After research, stumbling over veteran accounts and documents, during the last few years, I have come to the conclusion that smoke is a desired and important feature that should be in the game.
The creators of the Close Combat series put in smoke from the get-go, if I am not mistaken, as smoke was also a vital tool on platoon level (single tanks or tank platoons, infantry platoons, mortar platoons, etc.), where the tools ranged from stick and egg hand grenades, cans, to even larger canisters (almost the size of a German fuel canister), in all armies. You might say now that CC is a tactical Coy or even platoon level game. Yes, that's correct, but smoke was deployed on all levels, historically.
If smoke should ever get into the game, it should not be off-board smoke (maybe except for coastal landing scenarios, say Normandy, Pacific, etc.), because the artillery pieces firing smoke were occupied and busy with laying smoke barriers, and did not have the capacity to fire HE at the same time, usually. So, HE bombardment, smoke screen, infantry attack, in that order (for offensive tasks), and for defensive tasks smoke and then HE right after, to disrupt and tear apart attacking enemies (maybe even a mix of smoke and HE, like the germans did, occasionally).
