Been playing a lot of X-com 2 for the past few days, and thinking about TTRPG combat. At first I went into this considering how it changes the flow of the past entry - from you being on par, if not superior to your enemies, to being on the run, relying on guerrilla tactics. Its a fresh take on combat, that you can easily apply to your own favorite tactical games to shake things up; add enemy reinforcements, timed objectives, bonuses for speedy escapes, keep your player on your toes.
However, there's another aspect that I'm thinking about, which are missed shots. I've talked about with people, and more or less agreed that one of the worst status effects is making you miss a turn. Stunned, Paralysis, Frozen, whatever they want to call in the game, the idea that "You don't get to play" just flat out sucks. You can mitigate, maybe have it being a gamble, putting yourself in harm's way to save your companions, and that usually makes it palatable.
But the other way that also sucks to miss your turn are complete misses. In PbtA, or other narrative systems, failure is expected to still move the combat forward, giving your enemies an edge, or applying conditions to your PCs. Its how the whole system is tailored for, since NPCs don't roll. In a tactical game, however, missing a swing or shot or spell is usually just that - a miss. The more powerful instances will usually allow you to apply half of the damage, but those tend to be rare.
What I've been thinking about is the idea of having secondary effects to apply to enemies. Things like suppression, mental imbalance, disrupting their position, weakening their systems or grazing. Lancer more or less has something in that vein, with Reliable damage; if a weapon has Reliable 2, for example, it will always do at least 2 damage, no matter the roll. But I keep imagining a way to help others with your failures.
For example, shooting but not hitting an enemy could give another ally temporary accuracy, either by pinpoint, suppressing or just giving an opening to the target. That would make the next hit more likely but also would it be worth to pursue that specific enemy? Making a tech invasion could weaken their systems, rendering their own next technological action more erratic, but they could just choose to not do that. A magical attack that gets deflected can make the mana energies in the area unstable and add extra, random effects.
I'm not sure how the balancing would work in a system like this, which would certainly be a lot more chaotic and deadly that your usual tactical game, but I think it'd be a lot more fun than the usual "Roll to hit, miss, sit there and wait sucking on your thumb"
