On cruiser air detectability and "stealth" AA

[Aotearas]

First off a disclaimer:

Yes the previous ability for cruisers to disable their AA, wait for aircraft to wander well into their AA range and then spring a trap by enabling their AA again and dealing lots of damage to the aircraft as they scramble to get out of one's AA was too much and needed nerfing.

 

 

However I find the current solution WG offered by simply tying cruiser air detectability to their maximum AA range to be too simplistic and at times detrimental to cruisers. First of all, not all cruisers are created equally. A Minotaur/Worcester or any other nasty AA cruiser could severely cripple any aircraft squadron caught in such an AA trap yes, but other cruisers that don't have such powerful AA might at times prefer to benefit from a lower airdetectability and sacrifice their comparatively less potent AA to that end. Particularily in later stages of a game when an alread hurt cruiser might NOT want to get spotted by aircraft in transit (aircraft specifically searching for you will find you anyway).

 

So, rather than tie air detectability to maximum AA range to avoid AA ambushes (which btw is selectively only targeting cruisers, what about DDs with DFAA that can shred aircraft like the Kidd or the Grozovoi), why not add a spool up timer during which the AA is not nearly as effective to give aircraft time to bail out of AA range without incurring devastating losses, whilst at the same time preserving the ability to opt out of AA in order to minimize one's airdetectability.

 

More specifically I would suggest that after enabling AA, it takes a couple seconds for each seperate AA sector to become active:

First short range AA would be enabled, then a couple seconds later the medium range and finally a couple seconds later again the longrange AA (delay until active for each range sector obviously subject to finetuning).

 

This should give CV players sufficient time to nope the hell out of even a Worcester's AA range before taking any serious damage if they take immediate action.