The mod is OK, there is a lot of men in black instead of real aliens, but otherwise fine.
With the trollium, I later looked at openxcom forums and found out that it is to prevent crashing on research topics only gainable by interrogations. The real problem was, that in order to research Alien Data Slates, I had to already know Alien Electronics, which are rarely gleaned from... Alien Data Slates.
The other prerequisite of the slates was Alien Codes, which I already had. I just removed the need for AE, because I was stuck researchwise.
Edit:
Update on the Openxcom thing:
Trollium was created to prevent the player from immediately researching the alien electronics. Capture aliens and eventually you'll get the research from interrogating an engineer, leader, or commander.
Same goes for alien codes, too, which are also required to research the Data Slate.
I just reread the original file (I kept backup) and yes, you can get it from engineers. The problem is, catching them alive.
Even now, that I capture aliens with stun rods (Because Dart rifles are terribly inaccurate) and have losses trying to do so, I mostly just get navigators, sometimes medics.
The fact that the most common aliens are Anthropods, which do not have ranks does not help things.
I just think that it should not be required to catch the correct live aliens to get the tech to identify which aliens to catch. Though then again I was going by the tech tree image that came with the mod and which does not seem to be correct.