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So I've been recently thinking about my ideal combat system and the first thing I had to decide was: how would it play out?
I think that one of the most determinant parts of how a fight evolves is movement. Movement in the current edition takes the most time to decide upon, play out and influences heavily all the tactical decisions you can make. It's one of 4E's many revolutions, and I don't think it's a bad one in many occasions (it can most definitely be cool). However, I also think a bit more leeway on the strict movement rules might be good for several reasons (listed below), so I came up with the following.

THE MAP:
At the start of the encounter the Master draws or describes a rough map of the battleground, dividing the area into Zones. Zones are deliberately left "unruled" since they determinate the scope of the fight; however, they need to be at least some 30 feet wide. You could decide for instance that a temple has a Zone for the naves, one for the altar, one for the crypt and one each for the two towers.
All Zones may have descriptors, requirements, rules, at the DM's discretion. This is what models terrain features, traps, effects... practically everything.

MOVEMENT ACTIONS:
Every character has a move action that can be used for one of the following:
- Moving: an unengaged character (see below) can change Zone as a move action, and move into an adjacent zone. For instance, from the naves to the altar.
- Engaging: as a move action, a character can engage an enemy in melee. The enemy must be in the same Zone as him. Engaged characters can't move to another Zone without pushing or luring their enemies with them and you can make Attacks of Opportunity only against enemies you have engaged. You may not engage any enemy if you are currently engaged, but you can engage enemies that are currently engaged with your allies: if you do so, you also engage every creature currently engaged with them. Yeah, it's a tongue-twister, but it merely represents clusters of enemies and allies all fighting in melee. Also, if you have a numerical advantage on your enemies, you have Combat Advantage, meaning two allies ganging up on the same foe gain +2 to hit him and three allies against two orcs have +2 to hit both.
- Disengaging: as a move action, you can disengage from your enemies. Each of them gets an AoO on you, simple and clean.

MELEE:
Melee fighting is very simple: you can attack any enemy engaged with you. You can't attack any enemy not engaged with you. Charging allows you to engage and get a basic attack in the same standard action, meaning you can move, engage and attack in the same round if you wish.

RANGED FIGHT:
Ranged fighting is governed by ranges. If you are engaged with an enemy you provoke an AoO by using a ranged attack on any other enemy. This means you won't get an AoO by using your bow against a single target (shift or 5 ft step + attack), but two enemies ganging up on you will prevent you from getting free shots: you attack one but the other will get an AoO.
Your spells or weapons have a range of Close, Medium, Long or Sight. Close means within one Zone (your Zone or an adjacent one), Medium is within two Zones, Long is within 3, Sight is limited only by Line of Sight or Line of Effect.

AREA ATTACKS: 
Area attacks influence a whole Zone, or more than one for particularly big AoEs. It's like ranged fight, but you get an attack on every target within the Zone.

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PROS:
+ Simplicity. It's pretty much linear and straightforward, it keeps movement intresting and you can still make some good tactics if the Zones have different effects.
+ Speed. You don't have to count squares or feet, you don't have to argue about getting an AoO or not from an enemy, and you don't have to figure out what's the path that nets you the best position-to-AoO ratio.
+ Narrative focus. You just have to describe your action. It's so easy and straightforward to adjudicate results that you can just describe without the hinderance of heavy rules. Want to swing the chandelier? Just a move action, or perhaps an Acrobatics check and a move action that moves you two Zones instead of one (from second floor to first floor without passing through the stairs Zone, perhaps).
+ Ease of scaling. If you aren't too worried about realism, you can use this system to model a battle that rages on all the rooftops of the city, with four very large Zones, or a battle that goes on in a pretty small room, with smaller Zones. There are a few reasons for ranged attacks scaling as well, but they require a bit of an open mind.
+ 3D combats. Seriously, just add a few Zones on top of your base level Zones and you have an aerial fight.

CONS:
- Zones are not too realistic. Zones are selected by the DM at the start of the encounter and may vary quite a bit. You might have smaller or larger Zones to the DM's discretion, which may lead to some discrepacy with movement speeds, actual range and such. This is offset by the DM giving more weight to his Zones and making sure they have good proportions, but may still lead to some less realistic results.
- Less tactical than grid. You don't have all those nifty bottleneck situations, for instance (although having a Zone for the bottleneck with a descriptor of "only two creatures at a time" works pretty well).
- Traps. It's a bit tougher to set traps without the grid, but I'm sure there are solutions. How did they work in 3.X and before, after all?

Feb 12, 2012 -- 4:18AM, Uskglass wrote:

Pretty much what I had in mind (but you've flashed it out much better and more clearly :-)) - which as far as I remeber is a bit along the lines of Warhammer 3rd Edition (?).

I don't know, it's possible, it's not that revolutionary of an idea. I'll try to take a look at WH 3E handbooks next time I'm in a gaming store.

I would just add an abstract rule for flanking in that as soon as you and at least one ally are engeged to the same foe you both are considered to be flanking it.

There is one already, it's the numerical advantage rule. Basically, two on one means they're flanking: both have Combat Advantage. Two vs two nobody flanks anybody because both groups guard each other' backs. Three vs two, the three are flanking both enemies by manoeuvering around them and striking at different angles, and so on. It's basically flanking streamlined a bit.

What I would also reallly like is for this system to be consistent with the tactical combat with the grid, so that according to the situation one or the other can be used. 

Yeah, that'd be awesome, but really tricky. I can see problems in adapting the various abilities to the different systems, moreso than the systems themselves. I mean, an ability that allows you, for instance, to engage an enemy as a minor action. What does it do in the grid combat? Shift 3 as minor?

I actually think that with the proper rules support (abilities and features) the tactical need would be pretty much filled. I mean, there are quite a lot of possible combinations you can try out if you add things like pushing or luring enemies into adjacent zones, charging, some movement based powers that let you move more or maybe disengage as a free action (still provoking) or things... It can be pretty intresting, and above all fast-paced.

I actually did invent this system independantly. It's not that original, though, so it's expected that some systems look pretty similar. Please note however, that IIRC copyright laws exclude the possibility to trademark or copyright rulesets (such as this), so it shouldn't impact your ability to have a game based on this system in any case. I think.