Hi! I am looking at what you are doing and it reminds me a lot of what I have done/have on my ToDo list for the XCom Armoury Expanded.
I already have alloy ground tanks there, more crafts (rebalanced along with their weapons) and an expanded research/manufacture tree. On the top of the ToDo list now (beyond ironing the code) is splitting research and manufacture, and designing an alternate research tree that requires more live aliens.
The XCom Armoury Expanded is intended to be a collection of mods, which are all made compatible and balanced with each others, but still modular in that you don't have one giant file that does it all, but an actual choice on which part of the mod you want to use but turning on one/many submods. Generally I take existing mods and ask their author's permission to include them, but I am increasingly looking into collaboration as I develop new content for the XAE.
It looks to me like your research mod would fit right in for the "hard research variant" I am tinkering with, and being part of the XAE would save you the trouble of integrating alloy tanks and crafts. It would also keep your mod "clean" in its intention: "Research needs live aliens" would be about that instead of it becoming a megamod or a full conversion (unless that's what you want, of course).
Between the alloy ammo, alloy tanks and alloy crafts of the XAE, players would have the tools to cope with the delay I think. And I am also planning an alien race collection/rebalance to go with the XAE, in which your tweaks on the alien side could very well fit.
What do you say? Or I could just plunder your ruleset for the bits I am looking for, with your permission
