I've been playing the mod for a couple days now and having a lot of fun being tense and afraid of basically everything early game, but now I'm stuck. It seems like the "Promotion II" tech/research/topic is the next basic point of progression, but it requires the topic "All Staff Contacted". I've managed to get everyone except the Chief Engineer, with his topic "Chief Engineer Recruitment".
I'm looking at it in the Tech Tree, and it requires the topic "Cool Alien Gadget". It says that topic depends on an "Obliterator Terrorist", which is an enemy I've never seen. On top of that, according to its entry in the tech tree, it requires the service "Std. Lab" which I think means Standard Laboratory, which you can't unlock until after Promotion II, which of course requires the Chief Engineer. I've barely fought aliens in my playthrough so far. It's mostly been strange life forms (megascorpions, zombies, etc.) and cult related quests. The only thing alien related has been crop circle and cattle mutilation missions, and I've already researched the alien fuel trace, and the farmers. The only time I've ever ACTUALLY encountered aliens was a "Military shot down UFO" mission, or something like that. I only just barely won, a good few of my 4 agents that got sent died, i think it was 2/4 with one of the survivors being super almost dead. We recovered a corpse of a sectoid as well as a few alien guns. I've researched the corpse, that took bloody ages, and I can't research the guns, seems like it requires a whole slew of alien related topics, with some undoubtedly requiring a lab, I'm sure.
So what am I missing, is there a super common item I need to research to complete this progression? I can't really fight aliens even if I wanted to, the mission has only turned up once in almost an entire year of in-game time, and there's no way in hell I could kill, let alone CAPTURE an obliterator, from the sounds of things, that thing is buff as hell.
