Why is it so hard to switch out of "party mode"?

[peridot]

I recently tried using party mode ("P") in a personal-scale dungeon. It was handy for avoiding lancemates' stupidity, but it is a frustratingly slow way to explore a dungeon. So in an ideal world I'd switch to that mode when monsters appear, then switch back when they're gone. But the game won't let me switch back "until the battle is over". For one basement-cleaning mission, this meant until the whole mission was over, i.e., exploring the whole dungeon in party mode. Why not allow me to switch back whenever I like? If the problem is what to do with any fractional turns remaining, why not just have the characters sit idle? The idea is that one would do this only when safe, but that the game isn't good at telling when it's "safe".

[Frumple]

My primary guess is that it's due to that fractional turn bit; being able to switch in and out of tactics mode without much trouble is probably too easy to abuse. It'd be kinda' silly to be able to fire three shots, take a step back to break LoS, swap to clock for a second, then back into tactics to do it again, to give an example.

You automatically switch back to clock mode when you change levels, which makes using it in multi-level dungeons (mines, spaceships, etc.) a bit less annoying. A bit.

I guess the ideal would be for it to check if there's anything in LoS + some amount of space, to keep the player from abusing blast weapons around a corner or something, plus that fractional pause bit you mentioned, so time catches back up to movement. It is more than a lil'annoying that you can wipe a level clean of inhabitants but still have to drag your party turn by turn to the nearest staircase.

[peridot]

My primary guess is that it's due to that fractional turn bit; being able to switch in and out of tactics mode without much trouble is probably too easy to abuse. It'd be kinda' silly to be able to fire three shots, take a step back to break LoS, swap to clock for a second, then back into tactics to do it again, to give an example.

You automatically switch back to clock mode when you change levels, which makes using it in multi-level dungeons (mines, spaceships, etc.) a bit less annoying. A bit.

I guess the ideal would be for it to check if there's anything in LoS + some amount of space, to keep the player from abusing blast weapons around a corner or something, plus that fractional pause bit you mentioned, so time catches back up to movement. It is more than a lil'annoying that you can wipe a level clean of inhabitants but still have to drag your party turn by turn to the nearest staircase.

As I understand it there there should be a moment - beginning of each turn? - at which party mode is equivalent to clock mode. I don't see any way to exploit a system that simply has your characters do nothing until that moment then switch to clock mode. If you choose to do this when there's something in LoS, well, that's your problem; you'll just stand there while it shoots at you.

Without knowing more about how gearhead's time/turns/actions system works, though, I can't be too sure this is sensible.