Rack

I might be misremembering how several interfaces worked together in the original. Plasma clips held plenty of ammo but I always felt like the clips themselves were scarce. I don't know if conserving shots actually saved clips in the long run or not, but I acted as though it would. Also heavy plasma would blow holes in things I'd rather wish were intact, I auto-fired a Heavy Plasma into an engine room once. But only once.

I suspect the answer might just be because crouching was in Xcom and leaning wasn't. If you added a lean option then it would be something you'd have to do as you got to every corner, it wouldn't really be a decision. But crouching isn't a whole lot different, I don't think I ever agonised over the choice of whether to crouch or not, it was just an interface hurdle.

In practise it didn't always work out this way, burst fire meant you had to reload frequently and especially with plasma rounds this could get problematic. It also ran an increased risk of shots going awry and hitting something you didn't want to. Then sometimes the extra damage could be wasted, burst fire was effective if you needed to hit multiple times but if you only needed a single hit a snap shot could be better. And of course a snap shot gave you a nonzero chance of killing the enemy and having enough TU to make an additional action. Sometimes you'd be left with enough AP for 2 snapshots but only 1 autoshot. It was still the default attack in most situations just because it had the highest damage/ap ratio but if it had comparable damage/ap to other shot types it would have been near useless.