Well I think redesigning how the puffy works could go a long way to reducing the complaints. I think (after my last chat with Pyro) the best structure would be to have puffy ack fire within an envelope that looks like a class B airspace.
I think having steps every 2000 feet (just like the wind settings) with an adjustable range, and lethality, for each step would be tremendous. This would eliminate most problems with ack shooting through hills without the overhead of collision detection.
Then I would add an additional factor to the size of the ack box. This pertains mostly to CV groups but could be applied to the strat citys and HQ's (and I think large airfields should have puffy ack). I think the ack box should get larger if the radars in the CV group are destroyed. So over a healthy CV group the box is as small as possible. Then for each of the 6 radars destroyed in a CV group the box would get some percentage larger.
Additionally I think the radar hardness needs a bump to make it more difficult to destroy, go from 250 lbs to something like 1200 lbs to take out the radar.
And one final thought, I think manned ack guns should have kill shooter on.
Those are my $0.02 for making puffy ack better for the game.