Is there any PnP expert who could explain me some details about initiative?
I recently implemented a modification that will make combatant who loses initiative to be flatfooted against his attacker untill he will attack himself
This appears as correct implementation, but I probably found one situation where this rule is weird - ranged combat.
Untested yet, but with my modification I think that the ranged attacker who wins initiative against melee opponent will be able to abuse the flatfooted state of his opponent for much longer time than when 2 melee clashes together (in case of 2 melee it is just first flurry). Player shooting rom distance and moving to keep this distance could probably abuse the flatfooted state indefinitely as long as he can avoid enemy to attack him and his allies. Is this actually fine?
When reading the topic of the thread I expected something completely different. 
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Both sides are only flatfooted the first round and it not a surprise round. Initiative is just use mainly for combat order. The only time one group/creature/pc are flatfooted for two rounds is if the first round was a surprise round. So group one surprises group two, group two is flat-footed and can only do free action (at the DM discretion) group one get to do standard actions so basically group one get a free round of attacks on group two. After that both sides roll initiative and if group one wins initiative they get go first (usually it individual rolls for PC) (so potential of two rounds of attack before the other group even get to act)
In nwn / real time combat this is hard to setup. I would mostly have surprise check vs if pc is in detect mode + initiative roll vs some DC and freeze them for first round of an encounter if they lose (not every round). Just some thoughts.
Here some links from Wizard of the coast on it.
LINK 1
LINK 2
LINK 3
Here some archived data too. That you might want to look at.
LINK 4
thanks for explanation ShadowM, not it makes sense to me (and I must find another way how to code this dammit)