ORIGINAL: Werewolf1326
Uhhhh... Nope. Even when I served in the early 70's a field artillery battery dedicated to counterbattery could drop a round on a firing enemy arty unit within a minute, sometimes less. Our guys could drop a round into a 12' circle. It didn't take eyes on the unit to do it either. Ghz frequency precision radars could track the fired rounds, calculate where they were fired from and send the information to the counterbattery unit very quickly. And that's with 70's tech. I can't even imagine how good they are at it now.
No the arty didn't have that kind of capability in WW2.
That said I hadn't considered either the environmental or geographical conditions extant in the Ardennes at the time. The weather especially, would have made counterbattery difficult as you pointed out.
You pointed out some things I indeed had not considered. thanks.
I am very out of touch with the modern battlefield I must admit, but judging by the fact that artillery is still being deployed, and used effectively, i.e. It is not being destroyed every time they fire, there is obviously countermeasures in place to mitigate the effect.
If you take the Falklands Campaign as a not so modern example, in 1982 I don't think there was a single counterbattery fire mission conducted effectively by Argentina. There were a few stray rounds that landed close, but that was just the Argentinians firing blindly over the hills hoping for the best.
I know that the Argentine gun positions were fired on in Port Stanley by Naval Gunfire, but that was because the Brits had observers in the hills surrounding it with eyes on the target.
Obviously the Gulf wars were very different, as it was a very one sided battle, where the coalition completely dominated the battlefield.
From what I have read CB seems to have take the form of shoot and scoot, similar to the tactics that the Germans used with the Nebelwerfer, using the MLRS systems with radar to engage Hostile Batteries, then move out before they can retaliate.
I heard that the MLRS rockets were often on their way to the Hositle Battery before its fired rounds had even landed.
Do you know of any Coalition guns that were successfully bombarded by counter battery fire?
So I stand by my point that even though the tech is there, and theoretically it can be very accurate, it doesn't seem to have made the artillery piece on the modern battlefield obsolete yet, so clearly it has its limitations.
Now roll back 70 years, throw in some very bad weather, a fast moving front line, and restricted ammo supplies, as well as countless other impromptu calls for fire, to directly support an attack or defense, then its no wonder not a lot of counter battery fire is going on.
I have no idea how you would program a game to make such a complex mission like this effective, without it feeling like the AI is cheating.
I think if you feel you need more Counterbattery fire you will probably be better of doing it manually.
Maybe it can be programmed into the game that when an artillery unit fires its current level of intel goes up a notch. I.e. if it was recent/good before it fired it would now become current/excellent, but I think that's a very gamey solution.