Guys,
Do you think (based on your CO experience) it would make sense to represent real-life specialized artillery commands like German ArKos/HArKos and Soviet Artillery Divisions & Artillery Corps as standalone HQ units in CO, or would it be better to just abstract them inside the Corps/Army HQ command capacity (as one would usually do)? And why?
The German artillery doctrine was somethat different, as divisional artillery (the higher calibre IGs of the Inf Bns' heavy Coys used to be combined and employed on a regimental level in support of the Inf Regiment or particular Inf Bns, the lower calibre pieces directly supported the line Coys of a given Bn) and attached artillery regiments sought to focus on creating a (thus bombarding the) Schwerpunkt and (in an artillery regiment) also on executing counterbattery fire. With the sound measuring units, the Germans were quite successful in either keeping Soviet artys down or even in destroying them during the first 2 years of the campaign, until the Soviets started to learn the lessons where they then kept their guns outside the German artillery's max range. Since - in the main - the Soviet light and medium pieces featured an avg 1 - 4 km max range advantage, they could still safely plaster the first line of the German positions, at least.
Another main goal of German units (ranging from mortars to arty pieces) was to disable, kill or deny enemy artillery observers from performing their missions, if inf could not boot them. The Germans put quite some effort into identifying and knocking out forward observers or observer posts. In turn, German artillery units's efforts were more than often hampered by enemy shells hitting their field telephone lines and where either unfavorable terrain or shitty or empty radio batteries did not allow for proceeding with observed fire missions. More than often it turned out to be an almost impossible mission to find the 2 cable ends say in dense woods, or in a heavily contested city area with house-to-house fighting. The number of losses among these signal teams were quite high.
Also, the radio of an FO (moving forward with the grunts) had a bulky "tornister" (backpack) radio with a range of 1000 meters only, so that a B-post had to relay the info to the arty unit using the field telephone or a bigger stationary radio. If radios could be used and radio posts reached, the Germans usually broke the radio silence, even tho they feared comms could be intercepted and arty positions revealed, to keep up the pressure with bombardments. There were cases where radio batteries failed and wires were trashed in North Africa, so that the particular arty units had to fall back to using the poor maps of the area they had, so that none of the shells actually scored any vital hits, but the inf troops would still thank them after the battle, as the ineffective shelling of enemy positions still created a positive psychological boost on the friendly ground toops' morale.
The German forward observers' (usually Lieutenants) death toll was quite high, since they were usually either in the first line, right behind the spearheading troops, or - escorted by a scout squad - even up to 3 kilometers in front of the German lines. Quite some artillery commanders (ranging from battery to regiment Co.) were also often right at the front MBL to personally command fire missions, resulting in a corresponding higher death toll.
The backbone of the heavy artillery in the German army (= Heer) was the 170 mm-Kanone 18 (max. range: almost 30,000 meters) , the 150 mm gun and the 210 mm-Mortar 18 (max. range: around 16,700 meters) , where the latter actually looked like a huge howitzer, but where the muzzle velocity actually did not exceed 565 meters/second, which resembled heavy mortar velocity speeds. The 150-mm-Kanone 18 and the 150-mm-Kanone 39 were also used, along with a wild mix of captured guns from various countries, ranging from 128 mm (french) to 155 mm (french) cannons, and even to 240 mm (czech, dubbed "schlanke Emma" by the Germans) and 305 mm (czech, used during the sieges of Sevastopol and Leningrad) mortars.
The 4th Abteilung in SS Artillery regiments was equipped with some of these 150mm and/or 170 mm howitzers, too, as their Corps did not have an Army's Corps infrastructure (means guns) and depended on the Heer's Corps or Army artillery support.
Hierarchy-wise, all of these guns were Corps assets (sometimes Army) alloted by and from the GHQ pool and directly controlled by the Arko (Artilleriekommandeur) and organized in so-called heavy artillery regiments. In sectors that were larger than the usual Corps sector a senior artillery commander acted as "Höh.Arko" ("Höherer Artilleriekommandeur" = higher artillery commander) and was in charge of all units tasked with covering that area.
During the course of an operation, an Arko could also find himself in control of units other than artillery:
- Panzerjäger - this seems to be pretty much like the Soviet concept (not sure if one side copied the other, or if this had evolved independently), as protective measure against unexpected enemy armor thrusts. Even though German AT units used to be independent commands and drawn from the GHQ pool and put under direct command of the Corps or the Army, they could also be found under an Arko, ranging from platoon to Bn-sized AT formations.
- Nebeltruppen - translating to "smoke troops", a deceptive designation aimed to hide the fact that these units were meant to conduct gas attacks, gas protection and decontamination, initially, but referring to real smoke troops later on and - eventually - keeping the deceptive designation after having turned into the rocket launcher force employed by the Germans.
- Heeresflak - an army AA unit which could range from a battery-sized to a Bn-sized formation (only a low number of independent Bns).
- Luftwaffe units - also providing AA cover, as additional reinforcement, drawn from Germany's main AA arm.
If not used for siege missions, the heavy regiments were supposed to conduct "general fire missions" on targets residing way behind enemy frontline positions, deep into the hinterland. For such missions these regiments depended on artillery observer planes, but also on Artillery Observer Bns - where the latter conducted missions behind enemy lines as well, as the artillery forward observers' (officers who were embedded with or positioned near frontline ground units and could switch between several "B"-posts = observation posts, usually) visual target acquisition often could not screen past the immediate rear area of the MBL, even if scissor scopes were available, escpecially when woods, elevations or bldgs obscured the LOS.
In exceptional cases, single heavy arty Abteilungen were employed to aid the divisional arty to temporarily enhance firepower in high threat front sectors, or where elements of the attached artillery regiment were not available, but usually remained to be held back to conduct the mentioned general fire missions.
Starting in around 1943, the 150 mm-pieces had to conduct an increasing number of direct support missions, supporting particular Divisions that were threatened to be overrun or that needed additional firepower for its own push.
The Germans tried to adopt the Russian concept of Artillery Divisions, but the one arty division that was formed in 1944 never saw action as a completely committed fighting unit (means operating in the same operation as one big unit), only parts were committed before the end of the war.
In order to render this, future game AI and OOB would have to render
- heavy Coys as being divided and having all of their high calibre guns directly subordinated to the Regimental HQ (to support the Bns) in one group (unit), while the lower calibre guns keep their organization and keep providing direct support to particular Coys, if needed, as regimental commanders often combined these peaces to improve firepower and results (field manuals also pointed out that a regimental commander could order the grouping at his own discretion, at any time, and that option was widely used)
- the ability for the German AI to focus the fire of such regimental assets on BN efforts,
- additional units being assigned directly to the Corps' Arko, ranging from AT to AA units,
- heavy artillery units (maybe even with a single mortar, say a single 305 mm - if part of the operation)
- fast ground scouts with optics providing for medium and long range spotting and target identification,
- aerial recon (Fieseler Storch plane) spotting for the heavy artillery units and delivering general (poor to good) intel about enemy unit movements,
- Artillery observer Bns (directly subordinated to the Artillery Regiments and maybe even employed for Heavy Artillery Regiments),
- fast scouts (the Germans had pretty fast armored scouts [6- and 8-wheelers], and they were probably the only faction that employed scouts with long range radio equipment AND long range optics),
- individual scout cars or small platoons to render scout/obs elements.
The question is, if it would be worth the effort. If I imagine that a Russian AI would be able to handle arty groups, wide front bombardments, combined arty missions on particular counter-attacking enemy units and deep thrusts where Inf units then hold gained ground, and if such an AI (doctrine) would then face a German doctrine that focuses on Schwerpunkt attacks (offensive) and fortfied or makeshift defenses with tank units as firefighter brigades to repel attacks and seal gaps until relieved by Inf units, in a defensive posture, then I'd say it would turn the game into the most perfect depiction of historic operational combat on the Eastern Front and that may be worth the effort.
My 500 cents.
PS: Well, a dismount feature would make it even more realistic.