Simple change aimed at balancing bionics further - require the installation and removal of them to be done in an area with a surgical unit or similar (hospital, science lab), put the character out of commission for a while (i.e. recovery sleep), and cause large amounts of pain unless done under anaesthetic. Could also cause a more specific disease as soon as the character wakes up related to getting used to the new bionics in their body, which wears down over time. No idea what the effects of this would be, probably simple stat loss.
I don’t like the idea, as half the point of this was to require characters to go to dangerous locations and make them safe in order to install bionics, but you could also allow kitchen sink surgery to be done with greater penalties using makeshift surgical beds/tools/whatever if you wished.
I have the idea that once you have the first power storage unit installed the second is much simpler to add and doesn’t give you much post op healing time.
Thinking of Bionics Thresholds, lets say you make space to slot in say 5 power storage units and after that you have to expand your bionics again.
Aren’t CBMs supposed to be mostly self-installing? Hence why they have ten units of volume as a kit, even if they’re installing something the size of a pinhead?
They require large amounts of electronics, mechanics and first aid skill to install successfully, so you can draw your own conclusions about that. Whether they’re self-installing or not, however, putting bionic systems in your body would cause large amounts of trauma and shouldn’t be done outside of a surgical environment. Right now they install instantly.
I would be all for having CBMs take several hours to install. I also would like them to cause a small amount of damage (10hp to all body parts, maybe) even if they succeed without a hitch. I don’t like the idea of requiring a specific terrain piece to do it, though, although having the terrain piece grant a bonus to the roll or reduce the damage or time, would be a neat feature.