If I'm not mistaken, your concern with ATO is that supporting the retreating heavy tank(s) with other armours to deny vision from enemy dive is not viable, since ATO is likely to drop equally deadly hits to all the armours in the circle resulting you to lost all the tanks.
If this is your concern then I have a tip that hopefully can help you: ATO's total hits are limited and mostly evenly distributed to all valid targets inside the visible area within the ability casting area. Retreating all the armours but the super heavy on the frontline is exactly the most suboptimal strategy to counter ATO since it will result all the ATO hits concentrated on one tank. If you support your front row tanks with your full army like againsting any other normal allies dive, help separating the ATO hits from the super heavies, denying sight by taking out the diving force, the ATO is not going to deal much damage to all your tanks at all.
The total damage done to multiple units is also incredibly high, if you leave multiple in the area. It can
easily drop a vet 3 panther, vet 3 Brummbar and Elephant to half HP (or less) all at the same time.
Additionally, since it's a dive, you're also contending with the enemy tanks - not just the ATO. As a result, leaving the vehicles in the area to spread out the damage will mean that most of your tanks will be left at half HP or less, making it easy for the attacking force to destroy all of them. The only 'viable' option is to retreat everything
at the same time, so that you leave the circle
and the damage is spread out, and the time within it is minimized. However, due to the layout of many of the 3v3 and 4v4 maps, as well as the size of the circle, this isn't always possible.
you are making things up to justify your trash narrative, ATO doesn't fall down instantly and you're going to decimate the enemy dive if you have supporting forces. When you kill the enemy forces ATO wont fire at you anymore.
your scenario is an allies outplay the way you describe it, maybe that should be telling us something
The delay on ATO is around 4.5 seconds, from
click to the first shell; less when you consider the flares drop
after the click. By comparison, the soviet 'PTAB' anti-tank run, which had it's delay increased because it was overpowered, now arrives after 8.5 seconds. The similar JU-87 close air support ability (which also needs LOS and costs 200 muni) arrives after
14 seconds on a typical map. It seems to me that ATO starts far too early, especially considering these abilities all cost about the same.