While it may not be an ideal solution, it’s an abstract representation of a moving target. While the game is played in a You Go, I Go format, in reality the enemy wouldn’t be moving all of their soldiers and firing and then standing still while the player moved all of theirs.
In most games like these, it is presumed or implied that a “turn” (a full round for the player and AI) consists of a certain amount of time, and that all action is happening at approximately the same time.
We did several experiments (particularly with the free aiming system), with freezing the animation (which just didn’t look right), slowing the animation down (which is what we do now) and having the animation run at full speed (which made the free aiming more like playing an FPS).
We decided to settle on the slow motion as a compromise - but the fact that enemies do still move and flinch is taken as “you’re firing at a moving target”.
This was also done mechanically to give the “snap shot” (as in, the shot without manual aiming) more utility.
Manual aiming was originally a Sniper special ability back in the prototype, but backers liked the idea of the free aim so much, they wanted it as a mechanic available for use by all classes.
This comes with some design decisions: Do you limit its use? If so, how? Do you make an aimed shot cost more AP? Do you make it cost WP? And if so, do you need to have the WP to even go into the free-aim mode.
One thing we were very aware of is the potential for free-aiming to slow down the pace of the game. When the player takes every shot in free-aim mode, searching for the sweet spot, how do you make it so the snap shot still has value?
In the case of Phoenix Point, the snap shot tracks the centre of the target. You can see this on enemies that move a lot, as the crosshair will stay on them.
It becomes really obvious with something that has a long burst, like the NJ Heavy MG. In free-aim, the soldier will continue to fire at the same point in space, even if the enemy ragdolls out of the way (useful if you want to continue shooting at something behind it). But, with the snap shot, the soldier will track and continue to fire at the target even as it moves.