German off map counter battery advice wanted!

[Narwan]

Which 155mm do you mean? The US OB has three different types of 155mm arty alone. The M2 being the most common for games as that was the standard for the later war years has the same range as the german 17cm gun. So no counterbattery fire between these.

And remember that counterbattery is never a given. You can have the battery with the highest range, experienced crews and enemy batteries firing every round and still not get a single counterbattery volley off. It's hard and in ww2 times took quite some effort and time to get rounds on target in CB fire.
Don't forget that off-board CB fire is very abstract in the game. It is NOT like firing in the game itself where you fire and then see if you hit anything. You will only see CB strikes that have already hit the target and do damage. So feel free to imagine the turns they don't 'fire' as turns where they try to git the enemy guns but hit empty ground instead.

If off-map CB fire were much easier it would be far too powerful. The side with the best (longest range) guns would soon dominate the game. Worse, you'd see players run to guns with the highest possible range in the hope of avoiding CB fire. Maybe even skip offboard arty altogether if the enemy has a higher range gun in his inventory.

It may help to think of it as each round you devote a battery to off-map CB fire you're firing it at the enemy guns. But the odds are low and you get just one chance per round to fire. The longer you keep them at it in consecutive turns the better the odds get (especially if an enemy battery keeps firing continually, eg round after round). But they're not great odds.

The plus side is that if you do hit you often knock out a valuable enemy asset. The downside is that during the time you have it firing CB the enemy is pounding your grunts.
You choose if you want to commit a battery to off-map CB fire or not. As the game works now either way can turn out to be the better choice. There's no best option, which makes it pretty balanced.

Narwan