Each piece would have a way to indicate attack (or movement) into an adjacent area, without actually moving a piece. A directional arrow that could be drawn from each piece would serve this purpose.
I like the feature from a different program but with a similar job (LackeyCCG, does for CCGs what Vassal does for BoardGames).
There you can just clivk with the middle mouse button, to produce a cross anywhere on the field.
And drag click to produce an arrow.
These can easily be removed by clicking a button “Delete all markings”
Easy and natural.
/Shoel
The Place marker trait can work well in this capacity in conjunction with a toolbar GKC to delete the arrow markers after their resolution
I’m guessing you mean like in the Memoir 44 mod, where you mark each piece when they attack and the target with a separate piece.
I’m currently working on a Monsterpocalypse Module, and a fairly common situation there is that two units combine fire with a third to target a fourth unit or monster.
Bu using the above mentioned method, You would use 2 clicks per unit/monster (1 to bring up the menu and 1 to pick the appropriate marker, in an already overburdened menu list). That totals to 8 Clicks.
Using the Lackey method, I would click once on each contributing unit, and dragclick an arrow from the leading attacker to the target. 3 clicks total.
And that doesn’t even touch the subject on the visual appeal of such a system.
/Shoel
What I was visualizing was a variation of the existing LOS thread. In this instance, you’d click on one hex, draw a line to another hex, and a little arrowhead would be drawn on the end of it to indicate direction. An arrow would be visible to other players, and persist on screen till it’s dismissed. Multiple arrows could possibly be drawn, but they should all be able to be dismissed with one action or condition, like Movement Trails are.
I have a dynamic property “attack” that is 0 at first.
I use numpad to set it to values 1-8. The direction on the numpad corresponds to the direction of the arrow.
Also CTRL-A resets it to 0.
Then I have a layer that follows the “attack” property. For the level 0, there is a blank image. And for the other numbers a suitable arrow.
I also have a “Clear attacks” button in the toolbar that sends CTRL-A to all pieces, clearing any attacks.
It works and was not hard to do. The downside is that the arrows can’t point to anything outside the adjacent tiles. Of course I could make more images and more elaborate control. But for now I complement the arrows with a crosshair to indicate exact target if it is not adjacent.