Alternate Artillery Rule

[Dog Soldier]

VM is right on this issue of the defender trying to hold ground.
I think the heart of the alt artillery fire resolution has more to do with the quality of the artillery for each side first and number of artillery units in each side second.

In F40, the German artillery is mostly C with some B quality in the PD. The British and French armies are mostly C quality with a few B quality in the British and some French second echelon divisions being D and E. Belgian artillery has about 20% C with the rest E quality and maybe a few D quality.

So the invading German armies have a slight edge in artillery quality, and a smaller advantage in number of overall guns. The Germans have more artillery than the combined Allied armies in F40, but smaller guns per unit giving them more flexibility with only one shot per battery. Breakdown of some of the French and British batteries into smaller units helps the Allies achieve an even close parity in numbers of shots, but at the cost of less effective shots in my experience.
If the Allies can concentrate their artillery in F40 which uses the alt artillery fire rule as a default, they can hammer the German advance to a stop in some sectors. The Allied artillery can be just as effective as the German artillery. The difference comes with the German PD which have higher quality units being shot at, thus having the capacity to absorb a lot more fatigue from Allied artillery before a degradation in performance is seen.

Where the east front is concerned the delta in quality is greater between the artillery units thus causing the really lopsided effect seen in losses. I think I checked once and it took about five times as many guns in the unit at E quality (typical Russian artillery unit in PzC until very late in the war) to do the same damage a B quality artillery unit did. I used generated artillery units with the same fire factors firing on a soft target in open ground with a target quality of C. (Note the use of quality instead of morale those who know the difference.)

Dog Soldier