As of r7774,

• The spotter minimum preparation time has been lowered to 2 turns (was 3),
• the spotter cth bonus has been doubled,
• and the spotter cth bonus now works for rifles and sniper rifles. Otherwise spotting was absolutely useless in the beginning, due to lack of 'real' sniper rifles early on.

And yes, this occured to me while actually playing myself ;). I will likely visit some other features in the future.

It's not cheating if the game mechanic itself changes.