just to play devil's advocate...setting to RF when empty is a player's fault, and is equivalent to a soldier sitting in an ambush with an unloaded gun. the "oh, shit" situation is possible in real life, and should be in game too:
soldier with RF wins the reaction check against the alien.
when trying to fire, loaded_amo = 0
If enough TU left in RF, reload
another reaction check. If alien wins, alien moves. If soldier wins, alien stays put.
if enough TU left after reload, fire.
the bad guy *may* have another chance to either move or shoot while soldier is reloading. in that case soldier's death or a missed opportunity is attributed to player oversight, I would say.
DoctorJ, your proposal that soldier would reload first at beginning of a round would be covering the player's mistake with an intelligent algorithm for a solfier. At that point, may as well tell the soldier "hold position" and they would sit, RF the sh*t out of the area and reload as neeede - until out of ammo, dead, or order is canceled. This is now a slightly more sophisticated program. Not a bad idea, just a step away, I think, from the level of contrl the game implies right now.
It may very well be fun to have "move using cover" command (if cover is available) and a "suppress area" command, etc. In fact, some neat improvements for alien AI can come of this.
