Hello,
with rather short ranged weapons (like Flame, Grenade launcher) I often have to calculate how much I need to advance in order to get in weapon range - or if im around the corner can I reach the alien there?, etc. these kind of things...
Another annoying thing is to check for a free fire-line, especially with the sniper rifle over a rather long distance and along of a lot obstacles, first you move your character, then choose fire, -mode, choose enemy, check fireline and then repeat - this can be quite tedious ...
However fortunately
I played a lot of Battle Isle The Andosian Wars (BI:TAW) and they developed an UI Overlay which really helps here:
What you can see here:
1. yellow line - weapon range
2. magenta line - field of view
3. red line - enemies in weapon range and with free fire-line
4. light blue terrain - you can move here and have still points left for one shot
5. dark blue terrain - you can move here, but you will not have any points left for shooting
I would propose to implement the points 1. to 3. and 5. I guess number 4 cannot be implement so easily because of different points for shooting.
Number 3. should be altered that there is a line drawn to every enemy in weapon range, but with the green/red mark of the line, so you can easily spot which obstacle is in the fire-line.
What do you think?
bishop
PS:
In BI:TAW you could activate the overlay either by hovering the mouse over your unit, or by pushing the ALT key (you could set this in the options)