Secondly, these canisters are (for an equally inadequately explained reason) rigged to self-destruct after a certain number of turns, and you don’t know how long you have until you’ve seen the canisters.
The problems surrounding this are twofold: firstly, you don’t know where on the map the Meld canisters are. One of these makes more sense than the other. Genetically modified soldiers have no sleeves. MECs are huge, and talk in robotic monotones.