If you have a lot of time/effort to spend or don't mind creating something that most likely it will be almost you that will regularly play it, then you can experiment new ideas as much as you like.
But if you post and idea and are expecting merely answers like: "awesome idea!", well that's not feedback, period.
I enjoy creating mods and I design them to then improve my enjoyment when I play the game, so it's a double win even if nobody uses them. It's even better if people do use them and help me improve them though, which is why I am posting on this forum and sharing the XCom Armoury Expanded.
I'm not sure if you are targeting me specifically, but Elerium explosives are not an idea I posted. I am simply trying to find ways to make it work, instead of restricting myself to finding reasons it doesn't work. Feel free to go through my stuff, in the XAE.
Rereading the early post, I suspect I missed your original intent. It came across as dismissive and negative, but I realize now it probably was not your intention.
You'd play that way, I'd play it different. Cyberdiscs are enough nightmares to make me go for improved explosives early, specially since Elerium isn't that hard to obtain later if you use the right tactics.
Ah, well, we each have our tactics.
Hopefully we can trust modders to make mods that aren't just exploits. I tend to think I can trust players to not be exploiters as well though. We are playing this game for our own enjoyment and there is no multiplayer/competitive element where it would matter to "gain the upper hand" any ways. Also, if you want to exploit stuff, it is amazingly easy in OpenXCom (give yourself billions though save edits, change the damage value and accuracy of laser pistols though ruleset edits, save scumming, etc).
Yes I did, because no one had considered yet these situations. Or did you wanted me only to present the cases where the idea works, which is usually what happens when someone creates a mod? 
But feel free to ignore feedback that you don't agree with - it's your time and effort, after all.
It is good practice to present problems along potential solutions or ideas, not restrict oneself to only the problems. It makes the critic constructive and also helps it go though better. As shown by our discussion, I do not tend to ignore feedback any ways, but some is more pleasant than others.
In this case, it doesn't really matter that the idea doesn't work in 99% of cases, provided that the intention is to implement it in the 1% case where it works. The implication that it doesn't work in general because it doesn't at the beginning or the end of the game was also questionable, but maybe you did not intend it.
OK, so now you need other mods to lengthen the game or prevent Blaster Launchers from appearing on Retaliation/Battleship missions during the first months, the latter being impossible to achieve with the current rulesets, to make the Elerium Explosives work. What about the the side effects that those changes would have on its balance (which would require more changes, etc.)?
Although it is impossible to prevent it from showing up, it is entirely possible to restrict Blaster Launcher access with the current ruleset. Having the weapon in your stores doesn't mean being able to use/research it and extended research trees will restrict its use until the proper time in the game.
Of course, that does indeed require other mods. There are actually really few mods that don't require anything to maintain proper balance: reskins, sound changes.. creating an entirely equivalent weapon to a vanilla one, maybe? (But I actually don't think so, even Gauss weapons as laser alternatives change the balance). In a sense, your terrains change balance as well. They provide new challenges and often require changes of tactics/weaponry. A terrain with more cover is a much better terrain for chryssalids. A very complicated terrain is bad for the AI (I've had a few terrors with 0 civilian casualties, simply because the aliens could not find the civilians!).
Is it a bad thing to change balance? I would say only if it deteriorates the game experience. Maybe making the game harder is better? (slower lasers, changes to psi-overpowers, plasma and armors, etc). But that's a rather personal choice.
Neither is requiring other mods (or really elaborate mods) a bad thing provided you are willing to do it. That's what the FMP, Equal Terms and to a much lesser extent, the XAE all try to provide: A balanced series of changes to provide an improved experience. Piratez is different in that it is pretty much a new game, but fundamentally it also changes a whole bunch of stuff while still trying to maintain balance.
You just came up with all those suggestions after I made a criticism about this idea and we discussed it. 
One thing is to merely say: "This idea sucks!", which is just negative and adds nothing.
Something completely different is to say: "this idea won't work because of X, Y or Z" - that's constructive criticism, which was what I did on the first post.
If you think the second type of feedback is the same as the first, then you really don't want to listen to what other people have got to say about your idea, and you're merely posting threads for people to tell you how cool you are.
Indeed, discussing mod ideas can very much improve them
You have indeed gone beyond the "This idea is sucks" critic. "This idea won't work because of X,Y,Z" is an improvement and I can see the added value in it. But it is still missing the suggestion, potential solution, suspicion of what might work, the positive element that makes a critic a good one. I will grant you, all definitions of "constructive criticism" say that it "often" or "usually" contains positive elements so it is not required, but it helps a lot, especially in the context of free, personal work like modding.
I have that philosophy for two reasons, one of which I previously stated on this post:
1) Any changes have side effects and usually the author is not aware of all of them.
2) You need a standard to judge whether a change is worthwhile or not. Vanilla is the standard because that's what players are expecting. Any changes thus need to have a minimal impact on overall gameplay while at the same time add something really new.
1) That's why we share mods and try to get feedback.
2) However great vanilla is, I believe we can improve on it. Players expectations and enjoyment vary greatly, creating a variety of mods which allows everyone to pick and chose what they like (or nothing) seems to be the way to go. We are not selling "The one experience", we are enabling people to design their desired experience. (This is also why I am a fan of more modular mods than bigger ones). In the end, if someone enjoys curbstomping aliens like space marines in a 40k novel, he's not preventing me from enjoying my delayed tech, more challenging game.
Now, I'll repeat what I said on the first post: "Anything that increases the current power of explosives just increases the player's advantage over the AI when using them."
And quite honestly, everyone here has merely jumped into the band wagon of "yuppie, it's something new!" and no one has considered this fact. So to me you're merely amplifying this vanilla flaw with this kind of mod.
I'll correct that again: "
Anything that increases the power of explosives at a given point in a modded game past what is available in the vanilla game at that point just increases the player's advantage over the AI when using them."
Provided that the increase in power occurs at the appropriate time (In this case: after Blaster Launcher would be available in vanilla, but before it is available in the modded game), it in facts lowers the player's advantage over the AI, while keeping everything relevant. But we're going in circles now.
I agree with you that not everything new is good, especially as it is first proposed. I disagree that no one has considered balance when creating mods, although they may well not have reached the same conclusion as you.
