I want to state my design goal here, my vision for how the Chosen should work within the larger XCOM2 game. I am doing this because there is a disconnect between what i want and what a somewhat big part of the community seems to expect from the Chosen.

To sum it up in a paragraph: The Chosen are primarily part of the strategical challenge, not of the tactical one. When in a tactical mission that has a Chosen, the gameplay shouldn't warp around them, they should act as a modifier/force multiplier similar to some SitReps. Ultimately, the game should still be about fighting squads of aliens with your squad of soldiers in tactical battles. Y'know.... XCOM.

(Warning, everything from now on is a bit stream-of-mind and might be a bit rambling at times. I might edit it later, if it gets too bad :D)

So what does that mean in practice? It means with my mod you will not see stuff like the Hunter squadsight sniping your soldiers from across the map. I believe that is just bad gameplay, frustrating and unsatisfying. And also shifting the game away from the squad on squad battles that i originally signed up for and that i love about this game. Instead i want to introduce abilities and behaviors for the Chosen that enhance that part of the game by offering small modifiers to the tactical challenge. The Tracking Shot and Spectral Zombies from the unmodded WotC are great because they just layer on top of any already ongoing fights and just add some extra spice instead of just warping everything around them. Those perks might be little challenge in a vacuum but can be quite nasty when you are trying to dig in your position against a Sectopod Prime or a horde of Lost Chargers.

I had people ask me to ditch the out of combat phase of Chosen and make them immediately rush the player. Supposedly that makes them more difficult or something. I mostly find it boring because it eliminates like half of the Chosen's behaviors and options. I guess you can see how that also contradicts my earlier goal to have the Chosen subtly layer on top of the regular gameplay. So no, not happening either.

I've now mostly spoken about things that i do not want to do, so how about some more concrete things that i do want to put into the mod going forwards.

In the unmodded game, Chosen are generally meant to go for captures or knowledge extraction instead of killing your guys. That's an aspect that i want to keep but shift more towards capturing. I simply believe that the knowledge thing is not enough of a deterrent for the player, losing against a Chosen needs to hurt. Getting one of your guys captured seems appropriate :) To give one very specific example, it is common practice to intentionally let the Chosen (especially the Assassin) do the knowledge extraction on the first retaliation just to get them out of your hair. This should not be an easy choice to do, if you feed one of your soldiers to a Chosen intentionally, that should have consequences that go beyond a simple +10 knowledge for the Chosen.

One thing that my mods are usually trying to achieve is more variety. Enemies should always have some options, which is why i am giving new abilities to those who do not have them currently. This has already happened for the Warlock who only had his Spectral Zombies in his unengaged phase before and got more small harrassment perks to rotate through. I will do something similar with the Hunter, despite me liking Tracking Shot very much there could be some other thing for him to pick from.

Another thing that i will want to do is lean harder into fatigue. Will loss has a lot of subtle effects in the game, from making your soldiers more susceptible to mind control and panic to increasing post-mission fatigue. An encounter with a Chosen should stress out soldiers more than encountering Sectoid#34509, so i am going to tie Will Loss effects into many Chosen skills. Like the Tracking Shot mark, for example.

Once that is done, should i decide to do even more for this mod, i would want to look into changing Chosen AI significantly depending on strengths and weaknesses. Maybe even add some of my own. A Hunter that is immune to melee could for example be extremely aggressive and in-your-face with close range pistol flankshots, while a Hunter with Brittle would be extra careful and snipey using only defensive movement patterns. That kind of stuff. Dunno yet. Could end up being too much work :D

And that's all i have for now. I will leave this thread open as a discussion thread, feel free to discuss below. Note that my stance on this is not really going to budge much, i have a very clear vision of how i want the Chosen to be.