The arty is very powerful, as it was in real life, and you can stop any attack dead by using it manually, with the (unrealistic) facility you have as human commander to mass it with pinpoint accuracy at the drop of a hat.
It's not unrealistic to mass arty units/pieces. The German rules/field manuals allowed German commanders to combine batteries and the COs used to do it frequently. The US Army increasingly performed concentrated fire missions in 1944, and the Russians even put up the biggest arty pools by combining them in Arty Corps. Also, artillery could be quite accurate, especially certain German artillery pieces and certain US pieces. The Germans and the Russians also had their infantry guns, that could perform (very) high-angle fire and lob shells right into enemy trenches.
Plus, the Germans used the airburst method to shell enemy troops in woods, which led to high casualty rates, as troops weren't just hit by shell fragments, but also by splinters from trees.
Amassing and manually controlling arty units is especially realistic in situations where your units are dug in/defending a perimeter and waiting for the enemy to attack.
All armies then used arty grids to be able to plaster incoming attackers. If detailed maps were not available, arty units used observed fire to create fire tables, means they fired say at the edge of a wood 400 meters away, at the center of the open field between friendly trenches and the wood, at a house in the distance etc., to build their own fire matrices.
Artillery commanders then ordered batteries to pre-aim at the expected point of attack (eg. the edge of the wood).
It then took less than 2 or 3 mins to transmit the fire request + the coordinates and to actually fire the first shells.
If the target was shifted, then the arty crews needed 1 or 2 more mins to adjust the guns to the new target along the expected path.
The whole process took another say 4 or 5 mins if the guns had to be turned to aim at a totally different spot.
US artillery observers had an advantage in 1944, as they could use (smaller) portable transistor radios, which offered a somewhat higher range and enhanced mobility of those observers. This even allowed them to call in arty missions behind enemy lines (or when surrounded), which appeared to be a major advantage in the Ardennes theater.
All sides performed aerial observation for the artillery. The Germans employed a range of dedicated observation planes (from the Fieseler Storch to twin-engine observation planes with long-range radios), they just had reduced (or even non-existent) aerial recon capabilities in late 1944 due to lack of aviation fuel and high pilot/plane losses - the Germans then had to resort to using high observation points like hilltops, church towers and other structures, or even purely relied on arty grids (for unobserved fire).
The Germans could also triangulate enemy arties by employing sound measure squads (a recon branch of the artillery), which had been introduced in WWI already (at least the French had created such squads as well during WWI), in order to perform counterbattery missions (which were pretty accurate on the EF). That method was used extensively on the EF.
This capability is not rendered in the game
Divisional artillery prepared detailed fire plans for planned offensives, in which potential resistance/hiding spots or identified enemy positions along the advance path were registered. The batteries then executed a fire plan to plaster such positions consecutively and to keep up with the advance of the friendly units, when the offensive started.
The main method to obscure FUPs or
approaches - to protect advancing friendly units during attacks - was to lay smoke screens, which are not rendered in the game. The German Army and the US Army used smoke excessively, both Armies also used smoke generators (the US Army employed "Chemical Smoke Generating Companies", eg. the 161st Chemical Smoke Generating Coy in the 3rd Army, the Germans used generators to obscure factories, harbor installations, coastal installations in France and the Tirpitz in Norway, for example) the Brits used it occasionally afaik (mainly in Italy, rarely in North Africa), I am not sure about Russian usage levels.
The Germans often dropped smoke on Russian attack waves to confuse the Russian infantry and to lower their cohesion, means they used it on the defensive, in sectors with fixed fronts (eg. first half of 1942). For this, detailed fire tables were created, arty positions thoroughly measured, and the accuracy of the grids confirmed by firing a few observed rounds at key points.
After dropping the smoke, quite some arty units then dropped reversely rolling concentrated (put out by several batteries) barrages into the smoke to disperse/kill the Russian attackers.
Usually, such defensive fire missions were very effective as the Russian inf - blinded by the smoke - then just hit the ground during such barrages, or as the bombardments thinned out the attack formations to such extent, that after such barrages sometimes only a handful of troops were left to proceed with the attack. Sometimes the losses (or the panic levels) were so high, that the units just retreated hastily back to Russian lines.
Despite the fact that there were no drones, no video transmissions, no satellite images or gps data available back then, the procedures were quite quick and artillery fire was often quite effective, first and foremost in open terrain. For targets in wooded areas, the Germans learned to master airbursts, time fuzed HE shells that would go off at stomach or head level, where then the high amount of wood splinters created evil wounds, but they would also reduce the protection level of foxholes, if they exploded near/above them. The US developed the radar proximity fuze to create these same effects, but the introduction came late so the shells were rarely used, afaik.
Today's procedures give a good idea about how thorough (and how many) artillery procedures are predefined.
While a lot of of the modern optimized processes and procedures are supported by computers, and while distinct rules guide command and control, the essence was already performed back then:
https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN5999_ATP 3-09x90 FINAL WEB 1.pdf
If I am not mistaken, the highest overall death toll during WWII was caused by artillery shells (all types, all firing methods, all fronts).
The Pacific Theater, respectively some Battles on a number of Pacific islands might have seen less arty use, as less arty pieces could be landed/employed on both sides, but Allied or Japanese naval artillery (if available) usually filled the role, so a reduction of arty usage didn't appear in each and every island operation.
as Dave has tried to fix some behaviours which led to the AI controlled (enemy) arty being prone to relocate too much, and hence not being in a position to actually fire support missions. Hopefully, this build is only a couple of weeks from release.
That sounds nice. The enemy arty AI is actually pretty mean, if it's in position to fire, which I really like. You can't just rush an enemy position through an open field, if the enemy unit has arty support. Such lively arty AI creates an amazing realism level.
