Silacoids are 100% thermal immune : Fire does jack shit period to them, and they leave a trail of fire when they move anyway.
And because they are immune, the morale is a non issue, as it only happens if HURT by it. This is why someone on the edge of a incendiary grenade stays calm, while a guy who has one blow up under him panics for 2 turns, because the higher flame damage means higher morale damage.
in short, no damage, no morale hit.
On top of that, they have thick armor, armor pierce, explosive resistance, and a decent chunk of HP. Normally it takes an entire squads worth of fire before lasers to take them down, and after, it takes an auto shot or 2 of lasers.
In short, now they are mean bastards, basically heavily armored mutons with a bucket full of primed incendiary grenades
On the other side, fighting them, the fire makes it horrific. Most armor doesn't do anything against it, it spreads fast, it causes panic spirals, and can burn many agents alive in 1 go.
This, coupled with needing a dozen hits to kill, prior to promotion 1, makes them an absolute death sentence early on.. ...I think id rather face an ethereal guarded by crysalids. At least those die when I shoot them
Bug in the new EXE
I see.. Well, thats one heck of a bug, but it did make me laugh, and was amusing to say the least... Maybe you could combine this effect with a bomb defusal mission, as a penalty for shooting bombs?
They were unfair
To be honest, I'm unable to really play the new update much with the gamebreaking "everything is high explosive" glitch (as hilarious as it is) so I'm unable to comment on the new changes for them. Also, maybe pushing them back slightly more would help, as prior to promotion 3, I'm honestly unsure if they CAN be killed, short of TNT spam...... which complicates the problem of their ranged attack, given that they are clumsy, and hard to throw.