Can someone with any idea how gas mechanics work in this game explain to me what's going on with them? why does smoke/acid/blood seemingly ignore all defensive stats. Why does getting hit for 10-25 damage from acid or blood weapons instantly kill any soldier in the game from full to dead? why does this happen even when they didn't get hit by an environmental effect? Are blood weapons supposed to be cross map perfect accuracy one shot kill aoe weapons that ignore armour?

I literally have 0 idea how any mechanic with gas works because nothing in the game explains it. It just seems either totally bugged that a solider in power armour walking into smoke or getting hit by a black smoke grenade, acid effect, or blood effect can instantly die with no agency on your part to stop it while alenium fire does 5-10. It's not like friendly smoke stops aoe effects from cannons or grenades from hitting you and enemies will use either of these things even on a single target. Literally the only success I've had in thwarting any of these effects is in exactly one situation. Alien bases. Plug the hallway with a tank.

Outside of that I can't begin to create a counter strategy when I have no idea how these effects or weapons actually work and they seemingly are just glitched with 10 damage dealing one shot kills for some reason. Why is it that in phase two my greatest fear is a smoke grenade?

I guess xenomorphs in phase 3 are also insanely dangerous for this very reason too. Due to my inability to actually engage with an aoe instant kill mechanic that fires around 30-40 squares away my only strategy has been to stand my entire force almost on the other side of the entire map and poke the ufo until the door breaks with a tank. I've actually had a tank on two occasions get instantly killed by xenomorphs using this type of strat though with one getting one shot by a face hugger (they are invis to alien recognition system and physically invis due to ground effects even selecting them with your mouse is actually impossible without using ctrl and manually aiming with your cursor needing to be in a pixel perfect spot) somehow despite being immune to them apparently and another getting one shot from 100% by acid despite tanks being supposedly immune to acid. I'm pretty sure none of what I just said is intended and if it is, it's broken. If any one of the things I just described was in another game it would be reported as a bug.

Is this just bugged to all hell or am I missing something here? atm I'm avoiding xenomorph ufos in p3 like the plague because they are just busted. For smoke I just spread apart and hope to all hell the one shot doesn't happen (it's just sorta random) and for blood weapons my strat is to leave the mission because unless the user is wide open it's impossible to kill it without losing half the squad. What happens in the last mission when I'm forced to fight like 5 of them at once?

I'm really trying to enjoy this mod but the glitches, broken mechanics, and general insanity of balancing from one thing to the next is making it really difficult.