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IIRC, to get your off board arty to counterbattery: Your arty must have longer range than the target and not be otherwise engaged. That is, you can't be plotting bombardments for the tubes you hope to counterbattery fire. Just leave them alone and hopefully they will do their thing.

The counterbattery happens at random; meaning that there is nothing more you can do to make it happen. There are automatic experience checks or whatnot that determine if it happens.

As for air interdiction, I have never heard of that happening.

The only thing that will invoke Counter-battery on your artillery is if YOU fire your Off-boards and your opponent's off-boards have range to reach yours. (The unit information screen in the Encyclopedia will gives this range information). On the following turn, the enemy battery will have 'spotted' your formation and then fire counter-battery against it.

Whether you've plotted a barrage or not, your battery will still fire counter-battery if it meets these requirements. There's no point to holding an off-board battery 'in reserve' for this purpose.

Prior to ver 7.1/H2H if counter-battery destroyed your first tube, that entire battery was down for the duration. That was changed in 7.1/H2H and doesn't occur anymore.

Sometimes, only the ammunition for a tube is destroyed (ammo=0) IIRC you might still be able to fire smoke from that battery, even if there's no HE ammo.

Understanding that, means you can hold your off-board fire while he pounds you with his. When he's done (empty), you can fire your off-boards without fear of reprisal. Players using German units might consider this tactic as they have hardly any off-board with comparable range to conduct counter-battery against US or SO artillery.

Incidentally, counter-battery off-board fire does NOT use up ammunition (?), but your battery will stop firing counter-battery missions after their ammo is expended.

If you want to avoid being subjected to counter-battery, just make sure your artillery has a longer range than anything your opponent might have. You'll fire counter-battery missions, but he won't be able to.

Ah ha!

Very good to know, thanks RB/ CPT (and originally, Gary)!

I’ll be perusing the Encyclopedia this eve to figure out my ranges. If there’s no ammo used in “counter-battery”, then the point of buying a small section of OB “decoy” arty is useless. I was thinking I could sacrifice some 75mm’s with a pre-plot smoke mission for example, let the enemy destroy those with C-B fire, and use up their ammo in that fashion, or then C-B them.

Russian and U.S. is just plain viscous. That’s how I learned to NOT place units near VH’s in a Defend mission.

If you folks could then, let me know what’s behind the following phenomenon. Is it time to reinstall? Or is there some other explanation?

It’s a WWII campaign, I’m defending against the computer. I’ve just finished the “Deployment” phase, and I begin the combat (I have no OB arty, and haven’t plotted any fire missions). The computer cuts to the map, and goes through camera coverage of what looks like a “fast artillery” fire mission sped up, without the arty, then cuts back to the “start turn” phase. Specifically, the camera jumps all over the map quickly, no shots appear, and then I’m back on turn 1, ready to give my orders. What just happened? Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve seen the computer use prep fires the entire time I’ve been campaigning in 7.1. Any ideas?

Originally posted by Vathailos
It’s a WWII campaign, I’m defending against the computer. I’ve just finished the “Deployment” phase, and I begin the combat (I have no OB arty, and haven’t plotted any fire missions). The computer cuts to the map, and goes through camera coverage of what looks like a “fast artillery” fire mission sped up, without the arty, then cuts back to the “start turn” phase. Specifically, the camera jumps all over the map quickly, no shots appear, and then I’m back on turn 1, ready to give my orders. What just happened? Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve seen the computer use prep fires the entire time I’ve been campaigning in 7.1. Any ideas?

Check your preferences it sounds like you have the preference for FAST ARTIlLERY turned on. So you would not see where the artillery lands.

I did Gary. It's not on . So, I'm perplexed. But that's what I thought at first.

Like I said, the more that I think about it now, the more I can't remember ever seeing any prep strikes by the computer, even when it's assaulting. It occasionally fires 25-pounder barages after we're off and running, and calls in air strikes, but no preparatory arty strikes. Is this unique to my installation? Or is anyone else running 7.1 seeing this?

I think I've seen it too. I think it's just the AI running a subroutine that's for some reason clicked even though it's not firing arty. Think of it like the AI glancing over the map like you do when you deploy.

I like the fact that Off Board Arty has limited ammo. I think that simulates nicely real combat. Artillery was supporting whole regiments and divisions, so at SPWaW scale, the arty should not available all the time (they have other formations to support as well). If u don't have a whole division at your command, that is.

Mortars are a different story. They r attached to a company, so they should be able to support u all the time. (But they can supplied with ammo trucks, so that's not a problem either.)

BTW, 50mm mortars r not just supporters. They r deadly against units that r stacked more than one in a hex. U have to shoot from a distance of max 4-5 hexes away tho. From a close distance they kill even routed units pretty easily. U can also destroy T-27's and BT's with them regularly, if u can direct fire at them.

An ammo-reload observation:

3 ammo dumps, 3 platoons of SP-Rockets (German), so 12 Wuhrframmen. The 3 ammo dumps will not reliably reload the Wuhrframmen every turn. Most turns they will, but every few turns (feels like ~3?) of fire they will only load 0-1 rounds of ammo on 3-9 of the Wuhrframmen. They're still deadly, however. It helps to get me to 1943 (never played past then!) faster.

About mortar tubes and arty tubes:

There was an observation in one of the first pages about how 120mm mortars seem more effective than 150mm arty guns. This is probably because the 150mm arty has to fire farther, and thus there is a little less room for a warhead. Think about it, the mortar only has to fire what, maybe 40 hexes? The 150 may have triple that range. Just a thought.

You may be on the right track Irinami. I've never handled mortar rounds but I have the feeling (I may be completely wrong and somebody can correct me), that mortar rounds are fairly thin-skinned. I have handled a lot of artillery shells and they have quite thick walls, partially to create more fragmentation effects when they explode and partially because they have to withstand a much higher concussion effect from the firing of the gun itself. So, a 30 lb 105 shell may only have 10 lbs of explosive inside a 20 lb casing. (Actual numbers a guess as I never took one apart beyond changing different fuses on them, but you could see how thick they were when you changed the fuse.

That might mean that a 120mm mortar may actually pack more explosive than a 150mm artillery shell.

BTW, while I don't know the range of a 150 mm, the range of a 105 mm in RL is about 140 hexes. The 155 mm I think could shoot about 246 hexes in RL.