--- Having preferential targeting based on a RECON value would be interesting. Terrain modifiers and Unit Terrain Modifiers could be used to provide a CONCEALMENT, which would also be affected by Fortification level, so Engineering Units could affect it as well. Thus a new ground unit would provide RECON to counter the enemy CONCEALMENT and therefore provide more or less Preferential Targeting. Thus the chance is not only dynamic, but reliant on your formations AND your enemies formations AS WELL AS the Terrain AND Unit Terrain Training.
There are two problems with this approach:
First, any approach which only provides a positive preferential targeting effect, even if it is small, renders a combined-arms formation almost strictly inferior mechanically to a single-class formation (all-INF, all-VEH, etc.). While the random targeting we have now does have its flaws, it succeeds at keeping combined-arms and single-class formations equally viable which supports player roleplay...this is I would argue a very important function of the current ground combat mechanics and should be at the forefront of any mechanical changes.
Second, the way to counteract the above would be to make Concealment cause a
negative targeting malus, i.e., if your Recon is not enough to overcome enemy Concealment your forces are more likely to shoot at the "wrong" target. I think such a counter-mechanic would be frustrating to players (ground units are already very complicated, why add yet another confusing mechanic to think about?) and doesn't really solve any balance problems.
--- Overall this would avoid some of the issues with preferential targeting. Likewise, having RECON based Fighter Pods would be useful to allow FFD Units to provide additional passive RECON. Allowing Ground Support Fighters attached to an FFD to provide RECON passively when on CAS would be helpful in this regard, alongside a dedicated RECON mission. This would likewise make CAP missions more useful against enemy RECON. The RECON mission could specifically lower the CONCEALMENT bonus derived from Fortification, making AA Units that much more useful to prevent degradation of this bonus.
It cannot be stressed enough that AA units really, really,
really do not need to be made even more useful than they already are. Right now even a realistically small quantity of AA units absolutely dominates ground support fighters, let alone the masses of MAA that NPRs like to field.
It is also worth noting that since the NPRs cannot even use regular fighters right now, let alone ground support fighters, this is effectively giving the player yet another advantage as the NPR has no recourse to fighters to overcome player Concealment, while players could easily do so if AA was not so overtuned. While I'm not opposed to adding mechanics for the benefit of players even if NPRs cannot handle them, such mechanics need to provide considerably more benefit for gameplay/roleplay and I do not think adding more complication to ground units accomplishes this.
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Personally I maintain that the best solution is to rebalance GSP requirement for multi-shot weapons, particularly CAP/HCAP and artillery. The problem right now is that if a CAP fires ineffectually at a tank, only 0.6 GSP are consumed, while if a MAV fires at an infantry 1.6 GSP are consumed, so anti-vehicle weapons are sub-optimal in terms of supply usage and are optimally used as a second-wave once CAP has been used to mow down most enemy infantry. If the GSP consumption is rebalanced to be more similar this should solve or at least mitigate much of the issue in practice.
