counter battery work was complicated, and actually was the aim of almsot the entire air war over the front (I did a paper on it at Uni a long time ago...fascinating stuff but alas I dont' have it any more
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Certainly in real life counter-battery was important..more so from about 1916 onwards when aircraft recce really started to be useful (mainly due to aerial photography)....but it was something that usually only accompanied an attack. Attackers would make a big effort to identify enemy batteries and KO them - but the counterbattery work would be in the few days before an attack only - not on-going.
this was only partially effective earlier on.....firing indirect required r"registration" which required a few shots to be fired to spot their fall...but the target might hten recognise their danger and move. By 1917 the allies had developed "silent registration"....accurate maps and aerial photography meant they could lay their guns reasonably accurately without firing a shot so teh target would get no warning before H-hour. It wasn't as accurate as properly registered fire, but this could be partially offset by firing more guns than you would normally - thus increasing the beaten zone and the chances of getting a few hits.
The reason for counter-battery was so that defending guns would not get their defensive fires.....ie pre-programmed fires on likely routes for attacking infantry in response to flares from front line positions. The defender would try to keep his batteries "masked" ie cammo'ed and not firing so they didn't get recognised, and so could fire when the infantry came over. Artillery barrages on attacking infantry were utterly devastating.
By 1918 the Germans were mixing their counterbattery ammo as 20% HE, and 80% gas......KO'ing guns with HE was simply inefficient and ineffective. Gasing the general area at least forced gunners to wear gas masks, greatly reducing their efficiency and often killing their animal draught.
It was capturing ground that killed artillery...eg the allies lost 1300 guns against St Michael in 1918.
So For GOA I'd like to see artillery having NO effect on enemy artillery at all as the simplest solution. Combined with artillery being lost if over-run IMO this would produce the correct effect.
A more accurate model would be defending artillery firing at attacking infantry before combat with the defending infantry, and attacking artillery "neutralising" some of this defensive fire. but I suspect that would be a bit too complicated to code just now!!
So I propose several changes that I think could be accomplished within the current structure. the idea of these is to make artillery useful without having the ability to completely destroy all enemy forces in a hex as it has now.
1/ No counter-battery fire - artillery is destroyed solely by being over-run
2/ Increase the stacking points of arty units to 2
3/ Decrease the strength points of artillery so they are the same strength as their tech level (so initial arty would be strength 1). Those nations with 2 pt arty currently would get a modifier to their arty fire making it less effective at any given tech level.
4/ Decrease the cost of arty points (since they're going to be less effective) so maybe 5 or even 6 per production point. by the time people research up to 3 and 4 pt artillery they'll be facing 3 and 4 point trenches IMO, so the cheaper shooting will be at least partially neutralised by more extensive protection.
5/ I'm inclined to think that Siege arty should have no effect except on fortifications - only small numbers of the very heavy siege guns were made eg only 4 of the 420mm Big Bertha's, but even 1 or 2 such guns could destroy a fort eg see http://tinyurl.com/2rgxmr for how 1 300mm howitzer destroyed an Italian fort with 3 shots...including 2 ranging ones!! ) Certainly they could be and were used against normal entrenchments, but in that context their effect was probably lost among the 10's of thousands of rounds fired from smaller guns.....ie each round was jsut as devastating, but wasn't really adding much to the barrage due to the sheer volume of smaller fire - Big Bertha fired a max of 8 rounds per hour, the Austrian 300mm howitzers could fire about 20.
