First off I think the most popular edits to the Skirmisher on the workshop are worth including: uncap Reflex and Battlelord. Uncapped Reflex is much less powerful than it sounds: the Skirmisher has to be shot at to trigger it and being shot is how you die. Uncapping it changes the value of other perks in the tree: Waylay and Total Combat become better and Return Fire becomes synergic rather than underwhelming. Uncapping Battlelord makes it work as described rather than stopping at two actions.

There's a purely aesthetic edit I'd make to the Skirmisher's tree: change Reckoning so the ability it adds to the Skirmisher is called Reckoning and has Reckoning's ripjack icon. Then change the tooltip from "Unlocks the Ripjack Slash attack." to "Attack any enemy in movement range with your ripjack. Does not end the turn. 5 turn cooldown."

For the hero classes in general I think the best thing to do is what you've done with the Skirmisher already: expand the pool of perks they can get from their XCOM abilities to inject more optional variety without changing the classes in any fundamental way. It'd be in keeping with the spirit of the mod if there were no blanks in the XCOM deck and every hero got six options although you'd need a fairly large pool of perks to keep it random.

In terms of balancing this I'd suggest something I've done before: rather than having one deck of XCOM perks split it in two like you've done with Operative perks. Low power perks like Return Fire and Lightning Hands are in the first deck and more powerful perks like Bladestorm and Reaper are in the second deck. I tried this myself a month back and it worked pretty well. It prevents situations where a very powerful perk being rolled too early in the tree gives the hero a huge power spike: I remember once rolling Templar with Bladestorm at Corporal and it trivialised the early game.

As for perk suggestions:

Skirmisher: Run and Gun, Implacable, Blast Padding and Untouchable have strong synergy with the Skirmisher. I'd put Saturation Fire and Return Fire from the original set back in if you're going with a large pool: Saturation Fire is a decent perk and Return Fire shares an activation condition with Reflex. Suppression makes a lot of visual sense because of the Bullpup's high rate of fire.

Templar: The Templar set is fairly solid as is. In terms of expanding the set most pistol perks it doesn't already have will do. Return Fire in particular is good on the Templar because it has the same activation condition as Parry.

Reaper: The Reaper's base set is highly antisynergic: Holotargeting doesn't work if you kill the target which the Reaper generally wants to do to keep Shadow. Kill Zone doesn't trigger if you're concealed and therefore is also terrible, especially as the Reaper can't reliably leave concealment. I don't like having Shredder in the Reaper's set because it makes Banish a one-shot boss deleter: without Shredder Banish needs to be set up by shredding the armor first. Serial and Rapid Fire are good inclusions that play nice with the Reaper's mechanics although Rapid Fire's probably going to break Shadow. The Reaper can also make good use of Run and Gun: it lets the Reaper move and use its Claymore combo. Implacable isn't bad on any soldier.

General: Field Medic could be interesting.



Onto SPARKs: I almost always make SPARKs because I like them so I've got a fair bit to say on the subject but I absolutely agree with you that they're underwhelming and probably not worth the cost if playing optimally. Brace yourself for a lot of text - this section ended up over 1000 words long.

- THE PROBLEMS WITH THE SPARK -

The vanilla SPARK was designed with two builds: a straightforward shooter and a tank. The shooter role turns it into a robot version of the Heavy Gunner Grenadier. It's not bad but it's not better than the Grenadier which begs the question: why not just get a Grenadier?

A big argument in favour of "just get a Grenadier" is the cost of the SPARK. Their up front cost is nothing to balk at: using two elerium cores has a heavy opportunity cost. Their armour and weapon upgrades are comparable to XCOM units so running SPARKs pretty much doubles your armour upgrade costs. The weapon also isn't cheap.

The unique role the SPARK brings to the table is that of a tank: with 15 defence at all times it draws enemy fire away from allies in low cover. The problem is the SPARK is limited in this task by its health pool: once it takes too much damage it has to fall back to the shooter role and in that role it's worse than the shooter SPARK.

At Sergeant and below the SPARK simply doesn't have the health to tank for long: as soon as it takes a hit or two it has to fall back or extract. SPARKs can't bleed out so the SPARK can't risk tanking at low health. Furthermore if a SPARK encounters an enemy that shreds it's completely neutered: it relies on armor to tank.

At Captain the SPARK has an ability you've never not take: Repair. This gives both the SPARK and any other SPARKs in the squad a sizeable power boost as it effectively doubles their health pool. This enables the SPARK to tank for twice as long. If you want a SPARK to tank you've got to babysit it to Captain and then it'll be an decent tank. Unless it sees a Sectopod or something. Then it's a dead tank.




- SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS WITH THE SPARK -

- Cost -
I'd suggest taking a leaf out of the hero books with the SPARK: tie its upgrades to other purchases. The SPARK's armour upgrades with Predator and Warden like heroes and its heavy cannon upgrades with the XCOM cannon. It keeps its up front Proving Ground cost but that's all you pay for it.

- Repair -
The SPARK is as reliant on Repair as normal soldiers are on medkits: moreso given it's designed to be shot at. Given Repair is such an automatic choice that it's almost no choice at all I suggest not having it in the tree at all.

Instead give the SPARK a new cooldown-based Repair ability at Squaddie. The new Repair action restores 6 health +1 per GREMLIN level to a mechanical unit, restores any lost armour pips and applies Shutdown 2 as if it were Haywire Protocoled. The SPARK can repair itself infinitely but it comes at a heavy action cost: a SPARK that's constantly eating shots isn't going to be doing much else.

Building a SPARK also unlocks the Repair Kit. The Repair Kit is a utility item that can only be equipped by Specialists (or if not possible only grants the ability to unit with a GREMLIN) and gives their GREMLIN the new Repair action.

As the SPARK gets Shredder at Squaddie remove this from its tree and apply it directly to the SPARK's weapon. This makes room for the Repair ability as the new promotion screen only has four slots.

- Other -
I'd also consider giving SPARKs access to the Training Center. Rather than giving them AWC abilities make them use a custom deck like the heroes that has GREMLIN abilities in it.

These three changes (along with a new ability to replace repair in the tree) would suffice if you're only interested making small changes to the SPARK. If you're interested in something bigger though:




- SPARK REDESIGN -

This redesign is a rough draft and likely would need refining: the question is if you like it conceptually. It includes all the edits above.

The SPARK loses the SPARK BIT entirely and the Heavy Weapon slot with it. The BIT is a very alien looking machine that might be suited to an enemy in ABA if you want to reuse the asset. Picture an ADVENT trooper or ADVENT MEC being followed around by a floating heavy weapon launcher.

Instead the SPARK has a standard GREMLIN and a MEC's grenade mortar (the vanilla one, not LW2's giant back artillery). It has two item slots: a grenade slot and an ammo pocket.

The SPARK has one extra point of armor but doesn't gain extra armor from any of its perks.

The SPARK has three perk trees: Bulwark, Archer and Destroyer. Abilities are drawn from the vanilla SPARK, the MEC trooper in XCOM EW and there are a few custom ones based around smoke grenades.

- The Bulwark tree is based around making the SPARK harder to kill: it protects its
teammates by being shot instead of them. A version of Sustain comes early in the tree to make sure making a mistake doesn't cost you your SPARK.

- The Archer tree (named for the LW2 MEC variant) is a support SPARK. It includes upgrades to the Grenade Mortar. Later in the tree it gets abilities based on retaliating to attacks.

- The Destroyer tree is much like the vanilla SPARK's War Machine tree: if you want a shooter SPARK this tree has you sorted.

The trees could be reworked to be random but it also makes sense for expensive robotic units to be able to be programmed however you want to.

Squaddie
Linked GREMLIN - Grants the Repair and Intrusion Protocol abilities.
Grenade Mortar - Heavy Ordnance.
Overdrive - As vanilla.
Mechanical Chassis - As vanilla.

Corporal
Redundant Systems - Clone of Sustain. The SPARK can safely tank in the knowledge that its backup systems will bring it back online once.
Smoke Shells - Grants two charges of Smoke Grenade (or Smoke Bomb if unlocked).
Adaptive Aim - As vanilla.

Sergeant
Suppression - As vanilla.
Collateral Damage - 2x2 free targeting sphere, destroys all cover, deals 33% of primary weapon damage to all enemies in radius, uses three ammo, two turn cooldown. Based off XCOM EW MEC ability.
Strike - As vanilla.

Lieutenant
Intimidate - As vanilla.
Upgraded Mortar - Salvo but only applies to Flashbangs and Smoke Grenades.
Wrecking Ball - As vanilla.

Captain
Resilience - The SPARK is immune to critical hits.
Brawler Protocol - Bladestorm. Does not require Strike.
Bombard - As vanilla.

Major
Rapid Repair - Gain an action point when recovering from Shutdown.
Channeling Field - As vanilla.
Hunter Protocol - As vanilla.

Captain
Sacrifice - As vanilla.
Payback - Unlimited Return Fire. Is a turn ending activated ability with a short cooldown.
Nova - As vanilla.

Real Quick: DerBK, if you decide to take Lago's suggestion of removing the bit in favor of a grenade launcher (which I would really enjoy), you might check out this mod: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1161324428

RealityMachina's SPARK Launchers. It has the assets and mechanics for a grenade launcher, more or less.

I really like most of Lago's suggestions. I'd be happy with them, especially the "no blanks in the xcom deck for heroes" bit.

Stepping in here to offer the contrary point that I have never taken Repair on my SPARK. Bombard is sooo good. Pair it with Overdrive and a Shredstorm Cannon and the SPARK can set up two or even three pods to get mopped up by the rest of your troops with relative ease. It's also a phenomenal ambush weapon, with no LOS requirements or restrictions except Squadsight. And it shreds.

On that note, how would you make Bombard work after eliminating the BIT?

Stick it on the GREMLIN.

Heya. I just want to say that the Spark Overhaul is WAAAAY more than i would want to do.

In that case I'd propose the smaller set of changes, repeated here if you don't want to go looking through the gargantuan post again:
- Tie their armour upgrades to Predator and Warden.
- Make their weapon upgrade cost comparable to hero weapons.
- Change their Repair mechanic to something balanced to work at Squaddie. Redundant Systems (SPARK Sustain) can replace Repair in the tree.
- Give them access to the AP mechanic.

As someone who actually plays with SPARKs, yes please to Lago's changes.

What i want to do is changing the costs of SPARK related upgrades to require fewer Cores and Supplies, but require ADVENT MEC wrecks. Maybe later upgrades may also require Sectopod wrecks. That way their progression can stay seperate, but they compete less with all those other upgrade costs that are usually more important.

I like the idea of SPARK Sustain, that seems very flavorful to me.

The inclusion of the "New Promotion Screen as Default" mod already opens up the AP menu for Sparks. You can spend XCOM AP with them right now in ABB.

I think the important thing is the armor and weapon. They're just *so expensive.* It costs as much to upgrade your single Spark as it would cost to upgrade your entire squad, and that's just silly. Even if you do bring wrecks into the equation, the absolute cost needs to be much lower than it is now.

- On SPARK theme: do you want SPARKs that are patched up and reprogrammed MECs like LW2 or do you want them to follow the Shen's Last Gift lore where the M1 SPARK at least is the work of Dr Raymond Shen?

- Slightly wildcard idea if you want detached progression: what about handling SPARKs through covert actions? Ditch the Build SPARK project entirely and have an initial Raid ADVENT Robotics Facility operation to get your first SPARK (like Lost Towers but offscreen.) Further cover actions have you send an engineer, a dead MEC and some materials off to the Resistance so they can build another in a hidden Resistance chop shop. Scale the rank of the SPARK recruit like you would a hero recruit and you've got a comeback mechanic for SPARKs too.

- On the armour and weapon: perhaps a Proving Ground approach instead of squad upgrades? It'd fit the salvage theme if you built SPARK gear individually out of bits of dead MEC.

- On Sectopods as an item requirement: I wouldn't require Sectopod wrecks for any SPARK upgrades: Force Level 16 is too long for them to have to wait. If you want wrecks as requirements I'd have standard MECs be needed to make M2 SPARK Gear. Add a Heavy MEC Power Core item to the M2 MEC's corpse drops which is used to make the M3 SPARK chassis. Have the M3 SPARK gun use an Andromedon corpse: use a huge beam cannon to make a huge beam cannon.
As for the Sectopod itself: if you don't like the Covert Action route I'd have that unlock an alternate version of Build SPARK that lets you build one that starts at Captain. More expensive than building a squaddie SPARK and ranking it up but it provides a comeback mechanic and makes late game SPARK construction feasible.

- On SPARK Sustain: Do you see that as a high level or low level ability? If it's low level I could see it replacing Repair entirely provided the SPARKs get some good durability abilities later on.

New upgrade costs for SPARK stuff with next update of ABB:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198615601

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198615658

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198615705

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198615548

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198615767

That's a lot of dead MECs.

One more screenshot:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198675997

Moved Shredder into the tree.
Moved Bulwark into the Squire tier abilities.
Moved Repair to Aspirant tier.
Added Sustain, Damn Good Ground, Absolutely Critical, Demolition (AoE version), Tactical Sense and Focus to the tree.

And that is likely already the extent to which i am going to touch on Sparks.

I spent more time on modding Sparks today than i spent gameplay time on them over my last five campaigns taken together :D

Looks pretty neat. Colateral Demolition in particular is a nice throwback to X1 (it was a squaddie MEC ability in Enemy Within). I fear Damn Good Ground and Tactical Sense might impede the SPARK more than they help it: the SPARK's defence is set at 15 so that enemies target them preferentially to allies in low cover. I'd personally suggest Return Fire and Rocketeer to take their places if you choose to swap them out.

I thought about Rocketeer but felt it was way too good for Sparks.

TacSense might be interesting because it scales with the number of enemies in sight. You wouldn't want to use your Spark for tanking 5 enemies anyways, you'd want him to soak up one or two shots. If nothing else, it does provide options to tune the Spark towards one role or another, depending on how you pick your perks.