I had an idea today that would improve my experience when switching safety/fire modes and wanted to share.
As an example, if you have a select fire weapon, and your weapon is on safe, you can press the button to cycle to the next mode, then the next mode, then back to safe.
Current state:
(Safe -> Semi -> Safe) repeating OR
(Safe -> Semi -> Full -> Safe) repeating OR
(Safe -> Full -> Semi -> Safe) repeating
depending on weapon
In order to make it better/easier to select the right fire mode in the heat of combat, I propose that a short press could deactivate safety if the safety is engaged, and if it's not engaged, either do nothing or switch the fire mode between semi and full automatic. In order to re-engage the safety would require a slightly longer press of a half-second or so.
It would be useful even for non-select-fire weapons since you can just tap the button to make sure the safety is off and not have to worry that you just reactivated safety mode unless you held the button down.
Proposed change:
Short press
(Safe -> Active) once
(Semi -> Full -> Semi) repeating
Longer press
Any Active state -> Safe