Hi Xavius,
thanks for your feedback. I will try to response to all your points.

"Not able to equip Sniper Rifles"
This is odd. Did you had the non LW version installed?
Its just one line in the XComClassData.ini that provides the sniper so i can't imagine would should go wrong there. Maybe a mod conflict?

"Second problem I found is that the first two abilities you get to choose from are... well, they're damned near useless."
The throwing knives should be a "limited resource". They take the grenade slot, so they must be somewhat balanced against grenades.
Throwing knives should do more damage than the combat knives? If you attack with the T3 and fleche you can get like 27 damage (4 basedamage + 5 crit damage +5 silent takedown crit damage +3? fleche bonus +2 Combat Knife Spec bonus + up to 8 from Bring 'Em On) with a around 90% critchange (knife crit chance bonus, flank bonus, aggression, Cutthroat).
If i would follow your suggestion making throwing knives a unlimited cool downed free action they would outclass the combat knives immensely and would get way to powerful. I consider to even nerf the damage of throwing knives then making them more powerful.

"There's no 'run and gun' to let you zip in close and knife two people with an Inspiration point"
What about reaper?
" there's no boost to damage to make the knives comparable to any of the other melee weapons"
What about Combat Knife Spec bonus, Bring 'Em On and Aggression?

"This means that Ghost's 'Killing a target doesn't break concealment' effect is nearly useless"
Killing a target from far away with a sniper without cooldown and without breaking concealment should be useless???
I would disagree on this.

"And Ambush is... utterly useless. I've tried using it, and it simply results in breaking concealment even when it kills the target" this was a bug and should be fixed already.

"Placing X4 charges will, for some reason, use 2 action points, which is silly. You can place them for missions as a free action."
It uses one ap but end your turn. If it would take two you would not be able to move before planting. I did it this way because you should not be able to plant X4 and trigger it in the same round. That you can do it in missions is something completely different cause it is not part of the game mechanic that will do damage. I will change this however that both is a free action but cannot be done in the same round. I wanted to do this for longer now but didn't found the time.

"The 'Marksman' ability is nearly useless; even beyond trying to calculate where the end of a soldier's LoS is when they're covered by an ally, it just doesn't help with Spec Ops. That short bonus range simply adds nothing to the playstyle available to the Spec Ops Troopers."
Again i disagree. With the extended sight radius that the gts perk "recon" provides you get +6 tiles squad sight which is very useful if you spec your specops as marksman (Snap Shot, Ambush, Aggression, Marksman, Lethal, Ghost). Speced like this you will get a highly mobile scout/sniper that can kill from afar without break concealment.

"And finally, the Band of Brothers ability almost sounds good- except half the other mods here already add that in as 'minor tweaks', and do it for free."
Just because another mod offers this is no valid argument for me. Note this class has two GTS perks. So if this perk is not useful for you because you have another mod provides this for all you soldiers simply don't buy it. For those who don't have those mods its a nice gimmick.

Thank you for the replies, and I responses in kind. Thank you for your time, btw, I do love your mods.

1: Sniper Rifle Equipment
I... didn't know there's a difference in mod versions. I don't use Long War yet as I want to get all the achievements before my first Total Conversion. It might be that my modlist tried pulling from different versions of the mod at different times, resulting in the problem. I'll look up the issue and get it sorted myself in the near future.

2: Throwing Knives vs Combat Knives
The problem I'm running into is that the Throwing Knives, as equipment, are fine; I feel that the knives should be a cooldown-based ability for the Spec Ops, given that, IRL, anyone with throwing knives an carry a bandoleir with dozens available, especially if they aren't carrying long-term deployment kits. I would think there would be a cooldown, yes, one or two turns is fine, with their ability making it a free action once per turn, similar to a Specialist using the Haywire Protocol; it has a four-turn cooldown, but doesn't cost action points. The combat knife's power isn't the problem, it's that the ability to be undetectable for a turn doesn't help because enemy pods are never spread out enough; I always assasinate one of them, and on my next turn, I can't move it or it gets detected, and then it gets detected once they 'spot' the troop out of position.

3: No Mobility Boosters
For some reason, I'm only getting access to two of the skill trees, I'm not sure why. I've seen a few people with mods showing three skill trees, but I ahve no idea how they're accessing that.

4: Didn't have sniper rifles, all I had were either assault rifles or SMGs, neither of which helps in the early game except against the most basic enemies. I ran into the issue of the combat knives also not being useful early game, as that first ability doesn't boost damage or crit chance in the first two versions of the knife.

5: Oh, if it was a bug, then that's alright. I retract the problem statement then.

6: That's what I meant, and alright. The 'ends turn' is what I meant. As a side note, if there's any way to make the mission-specific X4 planting not break cover for the whole squad when planted, that would be amazing.

7: Mmm... alright, I see your point there, I hadn't factored in the extra six tiles of sight from Recon. Still, I can't access the sniper-like perks with only the 'throwing knives' and 'combat knives' based trees.

8: You have a point there. Still, I feel like it'd be better if it gave something a little more concrete, such as being able to stabilize allies who are bleeding out without needing a medkit. Not revive them or heal them any, just save them from bleeding out.

Oh this can't work. You are missing the third perk tree and 7th rank because you don't have the LW Perk Pack installed which is stated as dependency in the mod.

Its here: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=719109968

If you don't want to play with it you will need the non LW version of this mod which can be found here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=711592447

...Huh. Strange, it didn't say it has that dependency when I first went to DL it. Alright, DLing the Perk Pack.

As for the LW stuff, I just didn't want to completely remake the game on my first few run throughs. A few things here or there are fine by me.

So... I had another idea that might be interesting, but it might be a pain to mod into the game, if only because of the required animations involved.

Bows and Arrows.

Yup, that's right, full-on Rambo.

Specifically, my idea is to start off with a 'simple' Bow and Arrow setup, which has to be loaded after each shot similar to the Bolt Caster, but has the benefit of always operating silently, with a passive bonus effectively identical to the 'Ghost' ability high-level Spec Ops can get, but with damage comparable to the LW SMGs. Alien Alloys in the arrowheads and later using an Elerium Field Generator akin to the ones used in the Wraith armor allows the second tier Bow to shred armor, and the thrid tier to bypass both Armor and Shields entirely, and both of them work from Assault Rifle ranges, with a Crossbow variant for Sniper classes, with the same problems. Both would be operating under the Suspicion rules, btu would also mean you could have a varied strike team meant for infiltration missions who can wreak real havoc without ever getting revealed in a mission, without having to sacrifice having any classes other than Spec Ops on the run, but retaining the restrictions inherit in using Bows and Crossbows instead of more advanced weapons. On average, both would have 1-2 points less damage per shot than their on-level equivalents, making them far more reliant on skill than brute force.

As long as there is no soldier animation for bows it won't happen. I am defenetly not able to create such an animation.

Yeah
Hmm... we need to find someone who can do animating for this...