Starting a new campaign again because so much has changed. I've gotta say, I really love the atmosphere of the early game in this mod so much. I can just imagine two of my agents tooling around in a car, chain smoking on their way to a reported UFO sighting, bullshitting about idiot yokels high on meth and hallucinating... then the same two agents later that night, slumped down in a truck stop diner, thousand yard staring at a cooling cup of coffee as they brainstorm reports on why there's a buckshot-ridden sectoid jammed unceremoniously in the trunk of their plasma scorched car. Probably my dream job, if I had one.
As a tactical takeaway, the shotgun AP ammo might be a bit strong for the early game: the high innate accuracy of shotguns combined with good damage and no armor penalty makes them, hands-down, better than the available rifles, especially for untrained agents. I might suggest creating two different ammo types: Shotguns Slugs available for normal shotguns early on with a penalty against armor (15%-20% maybe) and then allowing real AP rounds to become available for more advance shotguns, like the Black Ops Shotgun. This would reflect real life, as commercially available shotgun slugs are big, slow and inefficient against body armor, whereas more specialized Armor Piercing shells can't be safely fired from many civilian shotguns.
