FWWC artillery effectiveness

[BigDuke66]

Good day,
there was a post about the PB Normandy patch regarding artillery that made me think about artillery in the FWWC series.
The notes mention that despite the fact that the general field gun types( French 75mm mle 1897, British 18 pounder, German 7.7cm) were capable of low trajectory indirect fire it was decided to not uses this for various and good reasons.
My problem now is that this artillery as a direct fire weapon has its fire value lowered to 1/3 if it's firing at ranges of more than one hex.
The F14 manual states on page 33 under Additional Fire Modifiers:
"Direct fire at ranges greater than 1 is modified by the Range Effect
Parameter Data Value. For example, if the Range Effect value is 1/3,
then the fire value of direct fire at a range of 2 hexes is multiplied by 1/3."
That makes much sense for MG as they are surely not as effective at ranges of more than 1 km compared to range of under 1 km.
But makes this sense for artillery that fires shells that explode with more or less the same effect mo matter if the fly 2 or 20 km?
Of course you can argue that fire at longer ranges gets inaccurate but lowering it to 1/3 seems much to much on the first view.
Maybe someone can enlighten the community with a bit of WW1 artillery knowledge that could justify this drastic lowering of the artillery.
Cheers

[Volcano Man]

The range modifier is for all units, even MG units shooting two hexes. The main reason it exists is to represent difficulties in hitting the target at longer range.

Of course you can always lower that value in the PDF to 1 (or 1.5) if you like, but the main intent of these weapons is to disrupt the enemy at long range (3-5 hexes) so in that regard, I was always fine with the way they perform.