You're trying to grant the reactive player multiple opportunities for extra normal unopposed rolls to move around and adjust positioning. Part of the strategy in deploying second is that you need to weigh the risks of deploying out of sight or being exposed to incoming fire. Do you deploy aggressively for overwatch and risk getting shot on the first turn? Or do you allow your opponent free reign of the board while you hide and wait for your own Active turn? Or something in between? Well if you get free Dodges any time someone pops a smoke outside of your LoF, you can freely deploy aggressively and just change your mind on your first ARO. There's no strategy involved there. This would actually severely alter the balance of Smoke ammo in and of itself, since a smoke template is infinitely high, every trooper on the board facing in the right direction would constantly be getting free Dodges.
You drop a smoke, noone gets to react, you move a high-burst unit into position within smoke, idle+ shooting with -6 to -12 mod. Is there a strategy? :)
Re-read the rules for Zero Visibility Zone. You get a reaction when someone shoots at you through smoke. And if the penalties to shoot back are too high for your taste, you even get a Dodge! Yes, the strategy there is to determine if spending extra orders to set up that stacked modifier (for a still uncertain result) is worthwhile when you could be using those limited orders in some other fashion.
If you want to be so reductive: You move around the enemy, you shoot them from behind, no one gets to react. Is there a strategy? You move your TO Marker up, the reactions are bad or worse, the marker moves up and starts chopping at massive negative MODs to opponent. Is there a strategy? You position Armand in cover at the back, the TR REM can't even hit, Armand shoots out all your TR REMs. Is there a strategy? Djanbazan sniper just shoots all the warbands forced to run at him, smoke doesn't even work. Is there a strategy? Yes. Yes, there's strategy at play. You summed it up using fairly short terms and without calculating the costs or implications to the table state that said strategy imposes, the rarity of troopers, nor the advantages that can be exploited to gain an advantage, but otherwise you did sum up a strategy.
I'm not seeing how this contradicts 'a fundamental part of the game mechanics that you only get to react to the active trooper(s)' The argument with that is that some people thing that Stealth means that you only get to react to a subset of active troopers (those which specifically granted you an ARO). Which isn't supported by RAW or the fundamental game mechanics. But that's OT and anybody interested should go to the appropriate thread.
Smoke/Eclipse grenades are probably the most powerful ability in the game, so I understand your salt. But it's part and parcel of how the game works.
Actually not true. The mine's effect template is 8" long. I can stand 8.9" away from your troop (out of LoF) and drop that mine. You get no ARO, and if you activate that trooper he will be forced to try to dodge or tank the mine. But that is not largely relevant. Not being able to run away from the Smoke can be irritating, but it is the game. Having to take ARO's from an entire 5 man link when activating a single trooper is also irritating, as is not being allowed to split reactive burst against an Antipode pack. You just gotta suck it up and play how it is written. At least you get to react, not many games about where you can do potentially more in your opponents turn than your own.
A mine template is actually slightly over 8 inches at approximately 8.35 inches. However with no pre-measuring of ZoC it's not terribly likely that you would be able to estimate this perfectly on the dot anyways. I don't see this as a major issue either way.
I've missed a light flamer because of this before. Last order I measured 9" away with my Ikadron. I moved half an inch forward (thinking that the last time I had measured the template it was 8.5" long) and missed by about 3 mm. Poor thing got a combi to the face on normal rolls.
Yeah those fractions of an inch are tough to eyeball, I always try to move a bit extra to be sure. Trying to improve my estimations, I went and made measurements of all the standard silhouettes and templates and wrote them down, haha
No, the target must be within the trigger area to trigger, which is literally the range of a small teardrop template.
The marker doesn't appear before order conclusion and there are no relevant rules similar to basic movement rules extending said marker's presence in the area to include position it is declared to be placed in. I guess that's the difference. While we are at it, smoke doesn't appear until the conclusion either. Not sure why OP suggests it gets special treatment, considering there's only a short list of things that give you ARO should they declare to appear in LoF, and smoke isn't just specifically exempt from that list, or anything.
