Smoke

Smoke is a Hex flag that can occupy one or (in most cases) multiple hexes. Smoke is immediately visible due to the tiles being covered in white or grey fog where there is smoke.

Smoke can be applied to the map by either throwing various kind of Smoke Grenades, special Smoke Ammunition, or due to the Weather (Fog).

When using Smoke Grenades, the Smoke starts at the impact and slowly disperses to the surrounding area - unlike fire, smoke disperses mostly evenly around the source.

Smoke has a few properties - but the most important one is that it blocks vision. A character can now see into, or past the smoke - just how you would expect it to be in real life. The only exception to this is that you will continue to see targets up to 1 Hex into the smoke if you yourself are next to it / inside of it.

As a result, many weapons become outright useless, because the lack of vision makes aiming impossible. For example any kind of single-shot weapon like Snipers, Pistols, or Assault Rifles in Single-shot mode can simply not apply any damage to targets past the smoke, as they can be only fired by having direct line of sight to the target. In contrary, all weapons that either have a cone of fire due to being able to be fired in automatic mode like LMGs, MMGs, HMGs or Assault Rifles in Full Auto mode can still shoot through the smoke by using Ctrl. Of course you still won't be able to see the enemies, but you can still try to hit them by guessing their position. Weapons that shoot on a specific Hex like Rocket Launchers, Grenade Launchers, or Flamers also still retain their functionality as you can still target a Hex behind the smoke.

You can blast smoke away with explosives - clearing smoke much sooner then if you would have waited for it to disperse by itself.