Yes, too hard mod. Weapons are locked and getting it is hard. And almost no protection from MC attacks, HWS is weak and falls fast. Its miracle if you pass 1 year of game time and not lose.
Yes it is very challenging early on, I found that I overcompensated with going all in on research and made up the gap pretty quickly once I could survive though.
The early game strategy I had the most success with was to rush research for gas cannons. Equip half to 75% with gas cannons and HE bolts, the rest with ADS rifles. The riflemen scout and spot for the gas cannons to bomb with indirect fire. Consider the riflemen expendable, anyone who survives a few missions may graduate to cannon-user. I recommend particle disturbance grenades, smoke grenades and flares too.
When you can, get thermal tasers and give each rifleman a taser too. Shouldn’t be too bad because with HE gas cannons the hallucinoid missions are almost a shooting gallery. They’re also a priority because you can’t manufacture drills, which makes drills largely useless since you won’t get enough of them to use really effectively
You may be tempted to get armor and I did enjoy the hard suit despite being underwater only but the early armor is generally too expensive to be worth it in my experience. Oh and if you want a tank get a gas cannon tank because the aqua jet doesn’t even spawn on land.
I also didn’t research church data bank so I could keep getting easy pirate missions to train troops on but this had consequences in my interception capability. I considered this a fair trade off since the mod uses USO components much more than vanilla and capturing downed USOs isn’t as good for that. It also kept my manufacturing free to make equipment. I believe I avoided researching mutants too far as well
Abort all polyp missions they are not worth it. Take one corpse if you can though
Even after surviving the initial game though I am still finding significant challenge in this mod. I actually have to diversify my tactics, adapt to situations, plan for missions, and sometimes even lose missions. I am really enjoying it
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Again, accordin to the game it's an underwater missin, but is dysplayed on the ground, seems that in 2.48 there are there are several bugs with geoscope. And im usin oxce 6.6.1
edit: the hallucinooid is immortal! It took several shots and did not go down! I retired from that mission, bu i recovered a coprse of it, strangely 
Are you only using ADS rifles? Those won’t bring down a hallucinoid you’ll need explosives
Also edit with question for Nord, does this mod allow countries that signed a pact with the aliens to break that pact? Deciding on whether or not to bust a colony but it’s high risk for little reward if the countries nearby stay alien
