Yeah that is pretty much it. Although it is AFAIK deterministic so there won't be any occasionally good salvoes, just a gradually increasing hit rate.
I know accuracy is already modeled, and you can see balls hitting in front of your troops occasionally, probably other places as well. If the code is already sophisticated enough, adding a random factor to the "on target" rounds should be simple. I suspect this is the case.
If accuracy were not modeled then the only thing we could adjust is the strength. By adjusting accuracy instead, we get a larger range of target effects from a battery firing, from nothing at all to what we currently see, if what I'm seeing in the game is correct.
The final artillery effect on a target is a sort of emergent behavior resulting from a number of interrelated factors calculated in the game. We need to figure out which factor is causing any apparent overeffectiveness of the artillery, and make sure whatever gets adjusted doesn't throw several other things off. Actually, it's JMM who needs to decide about any adjustments, as he's the only one who knows how the game internals work.
I've only seen a few cases in many battles where I thought artillery was doing too good a job. I expected artillery to be a tough opponent. I also expected it to be a strong ally. Maybe JMM can record the number of casualties from artillery and other sources and we can compare these numbers against actual battles. This doesn't have to be displayed in the game, just output to a file that JMM can show us.
Hook