Select reaction action

[Arthanor]

When I first started playing OpenXCom, I learned that reaction fire occurred with the weapon with the fastest snap shot, if a soldier had a weapon in each hand. But somewhere in the development of TftD, I think this was changed to the weapon always being the one in the "active hand", which is the last selected hand (and the visible weapon, in case a soldier is using two two-handed weapons).

I am playing through Piratez now, and I have a lot of gals with pistols and swords. This "active weapon" thing is being tricky, where a gal with shoot a pistol at an enemy stepping out of a door in front of her instead of stabbing it, and I am not sure how it works if the active weapon is a sword and an enemy walks more than a tile away. Does the soldier use the pistol despite it not being the active weapon? Does he wait until hopefully the enemy steps within the melee zone?

Overall, I think I would prefer a "use melee if possible, otherwise lowest TU cost snapshot" approach, which is sort of a hybrid between the old and new schemes. An option to decide how reaction is handled (between the two existing schemes, and maybe a "active hand if possible, other hand otherwise" scheme) would be neat.

[DracoGriffin]

I had an issue last night during a stream where a pirate with a Rapier in one hand and Smartpistol in the other (Rapier has lower TU cost), and I "set" the melee weapon to be used (essentially selecting it to hit and then canceling).

Anyway, she was next to a door and an enemy popped out and instead of hitting with the Rapier, she shot with the Smartpistol instead (which had a slightly higher TU Snap Shot cost), and when moved out of melee range, continued to use Smartpistol. So at least that half is working as you wanted, right Arthanor?

But yeah, I didn't have this issue prior to the TFTD nightlies, now that you mention it.

[Dioxine]

I think simply 'use the lowest TU melee OR snap' would be the best, that way the player can easily control the behaviour (eg. do not use a very fast pistol with a very slow melee unless that's the plan); would also make most sense, since the soldier tries to act as fast as possible). The issue with the Smartpistol might've been exactly that - the Snap shot is mere 14% TUs which can easily be faster than a melee weapon.

[Arthanor]

I like the idea of active hand, which lets the player decide (if they remember to do so) which weapon should be used. The only caveat is that it needs to really work, not like DracoGriffin described and using pistols in melee range when a melee weapon was the active one.

The other way would be an "intelligent" pick, which would be melee if in melee range, fastest snap if not in melee range?

Part of the solution would be to know exactly how it works..

[Dioxine]

Holstering a weapon seems like a more sure-fire way to decide what to use for reactions... As there is no indicator for which hand is 'active' which would make such micro-managing a royal pain in the behind. Also I think they do use 'intelligent pick' already, going for fastest attack when in melee distance, going for fastest snap shot when not. Now imagine setting everyone up for reactions, every turn... and then cursing as you set up for melee but a guy appeared out of melee and killed your soldier without any fear of repercussions.... don't fix what's not broken, I'd say...

[Arthanor]

Honestly, I am not even sure how it works. I remember it being "fastest snap shot + consider melee hit if in melee", but I also remember it changing to reproduce TftD behaviour. There is a "active hand" saved in save files, so it could be used for that and I am not the only one with this idea that making a hand active means it should be used for reaction actions (wherever that comes from).

That's why I was saying at the end that we first need to really know how it works, as that would alleviate the speculation and the frustration when it doesn't work how you (wrongly) think it should.