Why are smoke grenades so bad/inconsistent?

I have tried to change some things in the source but nothing fixes the issues.

Sometimes smokes bloom fully and are sufficient, sometimes they don't work at all, sometimes they're somewhere in between.

I've changed num_smoke from 7 to 400, which seems makes the smoke thicker

ZEffect* pNew = new ZEffectSmokeGrenade(m_pEBSSmokes[0], Target, v, 10, 1000, 20000);

I changed 10, 1000 to 400, 400 which gives it a better size but still they don't bloom fully all the time.

It seems that on Town in particular they are bad. On Port they work better. Very weird.

I recall smokes not being so terrible back in iGunZ. Any thoughts?