I was just playing a mission when I started thinking of shooting TU cost mechanics. I gave it a little thought and would like to see what other players think about it.
Taking, as an example, a soldier armed with a plasma rifle with a clear LOS to an alien, the shooting stats were:
Aimed Shot (16 TUs): 76%
Full Auto (16 TUs): 39%
3-round burst (12 TUs): 50%
Snap shot (8 TUs): 65%
Looking at this numbers made me wonder why the big differences in shooting time (because that is what TUs reflect) between a snap shot and a 3-round burst. The latter thakes 50% more time to execute! Is it really reasonable to think that a 3-shot action takes 50% more time than a snap shot? If we just think of the actual time the gun is shooting, than yes! But here (as I see it) TUs reflect the total time from getting the gun ready, aiming and taking the shot, and in this case the time the gun is actually shooting (when compared to the total time) is negligible! My point is, that maybe the TU shooting cost should just reflect the time it takes to get the shot ready, which can be reasonably reduced to an aiming time (I think).
That said, I was wondering if it would make sense to have a slightly different shooting mechanincs. Basically it would be split into two parts: the aiming time and shooting mode. While the former would increase accuracy (at the expenses of extra TUs), the latter would reduce it but allow for more shots (we can think of recoil effect here). This way we could think of a total of six shooting modes when combining the two parts (of course some guns could have some limitations like, for example: sniper rifles only have the 1-shot mode, shotguns only snap, etc...):
- aimed 1-shot
- aimed 3-round burst
- aimed full-burst
- snap 1-shot
- snap 3-round burst: hit and run
- snap full-burst
Some people might argue that with this setup everybody would just opt for full-auto or snap-shot, but I think it would all depend on the penalties. For example, full-auto mode should greatly affect accuracy and only really make sense at relatively close range, when the player must be absolutely sure to kill the alien (or the soldier will die on the next turn). This setup would make even more sense with the reaction fire system. In battle, if a soldier is really reacting to a sudden enemy, we won't just shoot 1 round He is more likely to shoot out a burst (maybe even a full-burst if in panic) to make sure he hits the enemy (or at least scares him away).
How can this be implemented? I think it can be done relatively easy: an extra button to set the shooting mode (full-auto, 3-round burst and 1-round shot) and the current shooting menu would just present the two aiming types (aimed or snap). This way the player can easily select the aiming and shooting modes, while also allowing for different reaction shooting modes (the soldier would always use a snap shot witht the currently selected shooting mode).
