Shadow Ops Long War 2 Class Pack http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... shadow+ops
Had a bug until a recent fix (tested, it's fixed now) that allowed soldiers to stack PCS. The class pack contains a perk that adds a second PCS slot, and the bug was on soldiers who only had one. http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 17&t=25993
I went ahead and played most of a campaign with this bug, and leveraged it strategically. What I got was: There's no more "throwaway" PCS, or placeholder "until I get damage control for this guy" PCS. "Acquire common PCS" becomes a meaningful hack reward instead of just being "Acquire a small amount of supplies" re-worded. I ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT IRON SKIN AND BODY SHIELD.
Even with all the PCS obtained in a campaign, it isn't enough to outfit everybody with everything. Sure hyper reactive pupils could add value on just about any soldier who isn't a concealed holotargeter, but even with buying all I could at the black market I barely had enough for all of my shoot-twice soldiers. They became a meaningful resource like alloys or elerium, and I was actively trying to fight people on stealth missions for the loot drops despite the threat of overwhelming RNF. Aim PCS still mostly went to snipers, but often I'd throw a bunch of common PCS on a newly acquired soldier before sending them out to fight just to make sure they could pull their weight. The way the bug worked, I couldn't place more advanced PCS of the same stat onto the same soldier, so it was a sacrifice of their potential for becoming gods among men after acquiring more superior PCS.
Did it break the game balance? OH yeah. That isn't hard to fathom. I abandoned that campaign because it felt really solved toward the end, and 1.3 / other mods I wanted to try came out so I wanted to start a new one rather than fiddle. I think game balance is a bit beside the point though: now that the bug is fixed I find myself once again saying "How many of these 5 combat awareness PCS should I sell?" and seeing them as a failed roll on something good being in the black market. If I pick up modding (have been considering it), I'll probably look into making a mod that does this bug on purpose, at least for myself.
A bug in another mod made my LW2 experience better (about PCS)
Re: A bug in another mod made my LW2 experience better (about PCS)
What your sort of describing is roughly Gene Mods from EW. The PCS system is sort of following that similar role, but restricting to only 1 choice and random drop, rather than a building + resources/time cost.
I think an interesting mod would replace the single PCS slot with an interface that was along the lines of Gene mods. Restrict it so that you can't stack the same PCS and have certain exclusivity rules that disallowed stacking PCS from the same type. For example you could choose Defense or Dodge but not both, Aim or PsiOffense but not both, Hyper Reactive or Depth Perception...
I would also somewhat gate it so that you can't just add 5+ PCS from the beginning, and require a time factor to 'install/train' the PCS for the soldier. Say they needed 4-6 days tube time to have the PCS installed? On top of that have a requirement of ranks per PCS installed.
Of course, that adds a bunch of power on XCOM side without balancing the other side. Maybe they can get PCS too?
I think an interesting mod would replace the single PCS slot with an interface that was along the lines of Gene mods. Restrict it so that you can't stack the same PCS and have certain exclusivity rules that disallowed stacking PCS from the same type. For example you could choose Defense or Dodge but not both, Aim or PsiOffense but not both, Hyper Reactive or Depth Perception...
I would also somewhat gate it so that you can't just add 5+ PCS from the beginning, and require a time factor to 'install/train' the PCS for the soldier. Say they needed 4-6 days tube time to have the PCS installed? On top of that have a requirement of ranks per PCS installed.
Of course, that adds a bunch of power on XCOM side without balancing the other side. Maybe they can get PCS too?