Has there been any consideration to the use of covered arcs or areas for reaction fire?
For those not familiar with these concepts -
- A "covered arc" is the sector between the shooter and either two points (which constrains distance; i.e. bounded sector, so the shooter normally ignores those moving too far away, even if they're within the angle) or two vectors (i.e. at any visible target; only the angle matters).
- A "covered area" OTOH would be denoting a particular small area to focus on (which would be similar to a covered arc with *minimum* distance as well, and minimum distance ~ maximum distance). At an extreme, this might be a single tile or a circle containing several tiles.
The narrower the field of fire, the smaller the number of time units that should be required for firing (in so far as the weapon is already pointing in approximately the proper direction). The narrower the distance range, the easier it is to sight the weapon to an appropriate distance. In either case, while there would obviously be no effect on the number of TUs expended *after* firing (such as handling the effects of recoil, letting a weapon's capacitors recharge, et al -- incidentally, TU expenditures should probably vary based on how fast a character is and how skilled he is with the weapon, sometimes in nonintuitive ways like a faster player spending *more* TUs on certain things but that's a different discussion), the number of TUs expended *before* firing should be faster and the likelihood of getting off the shot should be higher.
With that would come the penalties of significantly worsened response outside the arcs, and perhaps an unwillingness to even attempt a shot unless the target poses obvious imminent mortal threat (e.g. just showed up next to a window 2 tiles away -- perfectly reasonable for soldier to ignore the ordered field of fire in the interest of self-preservation; whereas plinking at an alien with a plasma pistol 40 tiles away and outside the arc wouldn't happen even if it were an easy shot).
These would add a certain coherence to reaction fire, and allow one to balance having actually realistic abilities to fire back without making units into ridiculous super-soldiers with amazing reflexes over *everywhere*.
If this UI is not really feasible, I'd suggest instead giving bonuses to reaction fire where a target had been observed the previous turn or two; and at doors, windows, ramps, and staircases, because these are normally going to get far more attention.
