ok you can have as much smoke as you want here's basically how you do it (it may be a litle ropey cause it's 5am here and i need to sleep!!)

create your smoke emitter however you want it cloud object etc.

Then create an airfield with the following params:

magnitude: (i used 5.04) 1 - 1000 depending on how strong you want the smoke to be pushed

Attenuation: 0.12 (controls the falloff of the effect)

Max Distance: 3.3

Use Max Distance: On

Direction: (which ever way you want the smoke to move when the object hits it i set mine to z = 1)


then go to window>>relationship editors>>dynamic relationships

then select your particle system on the left hand side.
Your airfield should appear in the pane on the right make sure it is highlighted (this makes the particle system react to the air field)

Then just keyframe your airfield moving thru the smoke and it should disperse based on your air field params. You could even parent the airfield to your ship (which is what i guess you wanna do) Just make sure it doesnt turn your object into a rigid body, if it does just go to the outliner and delete that node and it wont be anymore.

Maybe on that shot with the space ship shooting someone you could have dust clouds and stuff being thrown up from the ground if you had a particle system on the ground that was affected by the air field.

This technique will give you more control than particle collisions as well I think. experiment and see what you come up with

I've attached my mb file . It's basic cause