Thx @Macross
I know it's my own mod BUT I LOVE IT TOO haha

And yeah, the A.I.M. mercs are totally build that way...

Love this and i agree with Ze one on the aim merc perks 🤔

:-) Thx @Hachiryoku Same same.

Many moons later and I'm still loving this mod. Sometimes the smallest details make a world of difference.

@ZarrKaan Yep, works for me and haven't heard otherwise. Why?

Hey, is this Mod still working?

That's why we mod. Change what bugs us ourselves. Much better than complaining.

Yeah. I don't mean to call them evil. It's hard to make thousands of micro decisions and not be a little off the mark. They did the work, and it's clutch.

Just, some things bug us, as always.

Maybe we're just spoiled. lol.

Maybe it was personal bias @Hachiryoku. That could be. But then why is it so with all A.I.M. mercs that have gold level starting perks? To me the explanation, that they went back on a perk tree rule, but didn't apply it to their own mercs makes a bit more sense. Also reveals a sort of bias I guess.
It definitely gives a weird feeling, the "us and them" feeling as you so funnily and correctly called it.
Please try it out. I enjoy it enormously and I'll never go back that much I can tell you. :-)

@Jagr and Echo. I may have to give that a try. Thanks.

And yes, I agree. I do not consider it a balance breaking mod. The developers, bless them (I don't mean to sound snotty towards them), decided how fast the mercs should level up. It's a purely subjective metric (unless they level up too fast).

The balance aspect would be in the perks.

A person decided. People have bias's.

There's one battle where the enemies just teleport in behind you and always get the initiative ( maybe it's because my mercs are too low level to get the initiative...?).

So, the enemies magically teleport in and shoot you in the back... That was also someone's subjective opinion of what they consider fun to be. (Kinda makes you wonder, are you playing the game, or are you playing the developers?).

Sometimes developers, despite the overall goodness they have brought us with JA3, make bad calls.

And yeah, I absolutely see how they broke their own rules to give their choice mercs those choice perks that you have to work harder for to gain access too (and many players probably never get them).

I can only imagine they had favorites, just like any of us would. It's like they're saying, we'll let you make your own characters, but they can't be as good as the ones we make, because you're not us. It feels very glass-ceiling-like. I definitely feel the 'us and them' in it.

That sounds a little mean, but it's part of being human. We have bias's. Always will. It's hard to remove your own bias. But I can also see where they hear us, and improve it.

Subjectivity often results in pendulum swings, especially when everyone disagrees.

The only thing I can think of in terms of "imba" in this mod, is that you gonna take less of the bad perks (bc you're not forced to). But that's kind of the idea of the mod.

The devs build all the mercs they gave us with 2Perks ToTop, for example Sidney or Spike. I guess while testing they noticed that certain (weak) perks would only be taken by few people. So - instead of reworking these perks or the perk tree - they just forced us to (but not applying it to their already built mercs.)

So, if you like to be forced to take the occasional unfitting or weak perk play vanilla. If you wanna build nice builds as originally intended by the devs - why otherwise would the A.I.M. mercs only have 2 Perks to Top - use this mod.

@mousetrapreplica[TSC]
It's save to start within a savegame (and even reskill with the reskill mod mentioned below) if you don't want to finish vanilla.

It doesn't unbalance the game. Wanna know why? The perk trees are not well balanced from the get-go: you find strong and weak perks in all three levels. It just gives you more possibilities for builds by removing a limitation, that the devs didn't even use for their own builds (the A.I.M. mercs, Spike etc.)

Plus the perks tree is not well thought out by devs imho. Try to build an overwatch MG gunner that has the only MG specific trait "Collateral Damage" for example and you'll see.

This way it's just better. Sure you can have for example Killzone 1 (one!) Level earlier. Wow! That will hardly brake your game...

part of me worries about this unbalancing the game, but honestly the fact it opens up the possibility for so many more varied builds outweighs any reservations i might have. definitely gonna try this on my next run through the game

Good info Echo. Was wondering about including TacAI or GCNM.
Maybe soon.

Hey, I'm using x3 enemies via Custom Settings as well. I would recommend the Tactical Enemy mod to combine with that, it improves the AI a bit and gives them slightly better gear without making the enemies ridiculously powerful like the GCNM.

@Hachiryoku HAHA thankyou, very funny - but tru.

I also use multiple squads and level slowly. In my Vanilla playthru I had 1 Merc reach LVL10 - IN THE LAST FIGHT (lol)

Instead of doubling XP I just doubled (indeed tripled) the number of enemies via Custom Settings Mod. Epic battles plus helps enormously with the levelling.

OMG!!!! Thank you!

The characters level up soooooooooooooooooo slow as it is.

Who thought the slow leveling and window dressing would be fun?
“Look at all those cool perks… That you’ll almost never get to select from...”

Talk about a glass window. It must have been an 80’s grognard that came up with this plan.

In fact, we need a mod that just doubles the XP. Maybe even quadruples it. There simply isn’t enough XP during one playthrough for more than one merc-team to really take advantage of. When I finish a playthough, my AIM-merc is usually level four. (I guess because I use three full teams, none of them gain much experience individually...(?)).

That means: No gold perks for them!

UNTIL NOW!!!

Seriously, thank you. This will make my game so much better. It’s like you’ve corrected some grognard’s overthinking.

Thx guys! :-)
Just correcting a little dev mistake imho.

I dunno why they made us pick a 3rd (useless) perk when their own mercs only need 2? Hmm

Btw @Echo use the Ayahuasca-Reskill mod if you're midgame and want to respec perks now.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008972103&searchtext=ayahuasca

The best mod!

Awesome mod. I guess you're going to be in the top 10 soon.

@Echo Totally save compatible. Works immediately like a charm.
Thx for the question! Shoudl've mentioned that. I'll add it to description!

Is it save compatible?

Oh, this I like. :D