After playing ~20 missions, it seems to my group like the LOS mechanics are a little too forgiving, so that in practice it's actually very difficult to actually get someone out of harm's way short of piling up other figures around them, which just puts them under threat of blast/cleave instead.

So we've been trying to come up with tweaks to the mechanics that would make LOS slightly harder to achieve, without going too far in the other direction. Here's what we've come up with so far:

1. When tracing line of sight between two figures, both of those figures do still block line of sight as normal.

This would prevent weird shots like example #7 on RRG page 26:

[A] [ ] [ ] [C] [ ] [ ]

[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [D]

With base rules, figure A can trace from its northwest corner (through itself) to figure D's two south corners (through the target) and make the shot. With this modified rule, both the attacker and the target still block LOS, so A would have to move right one space to get clear of B.

2. When tracing line of sight from a large figure, the origin point must be the center point of one of the figure's sides. If the chosen side has an odd-numbered length, this point will be halfway between two regular grid intersections.

This would prevent bizarre shots like this:

[A] [A] |

[A] [A] | [ ]

[ ] [ ] [ ]

With base rules, large figure A can trace from its southeast corner (around the wall) to figure B's two south corners. It makes sense for a small figure to "lean" around a corner to make a shot like this, but large figures with ranged attacks (E-Web, AT-ST) shouldn't be able to lean so much as pivot. By requiring them to trace LOS only from the center of a side, their largeness becomes a little more of a hindrance to balance their offensive power, or leave them a little more exposed in order to maintain clear lines of fire.

3. When counting spaces or tracing line of sight between a door and any other reference point (in either direction), the door is considered to occupy the two spaces on the side of the door which is further away from the reference point. Doors are also (still) considered to be adjacent to all spaces with which they share an edge.

As it is, the official FAQ allows ranged attacks to target two corners of the space on the near side of the door, which can allow some bizarre shots such as:

[A] [ ] [ ] [ ]

| [ ] [ ] |

Here, figure A (ignoring B being in the way) can shoot the door by targeting the north corners of either space in "front" of the door, without actually being able to see the door's surface, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Figure B can also perform a melee attack on the door using Reach, since the "near" space is only 2 away. By considering the door to occupy only the far-side spaces, Reach attacks would properly have to be only one step further than regular melee attacks, and ranged attackers would have to actually be able to see two points on the door surface itself.

Thoughts on this? Any other ideas to tweak LOS to make it a little more interesting?

Personally I find LOS in SWIA, perfectly fine. It's very intuitive, because most of the time if it looks like you have LOS, you have LOS. If you want to dodge somebody you better be hiding behind a wall or around a corner. This makes thematic sense and makes the game flow, because you're not constantly stopping to get the laser pointers out.

I would agree that the LOS mechanics make it hard to avoid getting shot at, but I suppose that's a good thing.

We don't see too many people taking cover in the movies, and games move faster if everyone is getting shot at.

I've gotten used to it I guess even if it's sometimes annoying when someone is getting shot at who you feel should be safe...