Quote Originally Posted by Dobbs View Post
When we played, the smoke was placed on the turn the ship fired and remained through the next turn. It didn't move.

My thought was to reduce the broadside by 1 of any ship firing through a cloud. This could be very important when determining whether or not to fire on a turn.
This is similar to how I've played smoke, only I reduce a ship's broadside by 1 PER CLOUD fired through. The reason for this is I use small clouds, placing one cloud for forward/aft fire and small ships (regardless of batteries fired), and two "grouped" clouds for full broadsides from SoLs and larger frigates. One cloud per "group" is removed at the beginning of each turn in high and normal wind; one cloud every other turn in light breeze. Additional clouds are added to existing clouds as ships fire through those they close up to. This creates a lot of flux in visibility and can effect some serious lulls in combat for trailing ships in a line.

I only count those clouds that are close to the firing ship as obstructive to its gunners; spotting an enemy's ship from afar isn't impaired by smoke since that ship's masts tend to stand above its own clouds and provides a fairly good marker.