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Thank you for the clarification! That makes sense. So when we roll the same one again, it is basically a 0 - Keeping It Cool, free pass type of thing? And I suspect the new stress effects last a Stretch by default?
Thank you again for all your hard work and for responding to us so quickly with these new updates.

Hello again!

As mentioned, we are reviewing your feedback and have developed a modified version of the stress and panic response tables. Please see below. Also, the roll is now D6 + stress level – Resolve (not 2D6).
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This new table also completely separates stress responses from panic responses, and should overall be more intuitive to use.
Feel free to have a look before we add this to the next BETA PDF.

• This creates a kind of a hierarchy of attributes in that a -2 dice to Empathy is regarded by the table to be worse than a -2 to Agility which is worse than a -2 to Wits, so forth. It's a minor thing but it is an odd thing, in its way. Combined with the fact that physically focused characters are slightly penalised when it comes to staying calm (due to Resolve being (Wits+Empathy)/2) there are some subtle biases creeping in here and there. But I notice that you make one each of the physical and mental attributes low and one each of them high, so I guess that's an intent to try and compensate for that. In any case, it's relatively minor but noticeable. I feel Deflated is actually worse than current 5 and 6, fwiw, because with average stats or better, losing the ability to push a roll is worse than two dice difference. There's a cost to pushing a roll but it's a choice on the player's part and the likely number of rerolled dice is much higher than 2 so I'm calling Deflated as worse than both Aggravated and Frantic in the general case. Swapping the order so Deflated was higher would also reduce the effect of making a hierarchy of attributes, slightly.
• You've gone to quite another extreme now with removing ALL chances to increase Stress directly so that where before it was almost certain, now it never happens. I personally think Mess Up might be nice if rather than an additional stress response, you have the existing "fail" but gain +1 Stress. That makes a lot of sense in-game as your failure makes you even more stressed out. And if a player is rolling Mess Up there's a decent chance they already have one or more of the previous Stress Responses ongoing leading to either no additional Stress Response happening (if you're supposed to just ignore duplicate results) or multiple re-rolling (if you're supposed to re-roll things you already have). I think it's the former from reading later posts. Adding back in this as the single thing that adds +1 Stress is simpler and it's a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
• On the Panic table, I feel if you're going to spell out the mechanical effect of Noisy (alerting enemies within X zones), then that should also be an effect spelled out for Scream further down.
• My feedback about Resolve in general remains. I like the idea of different characters having different levels of resistance to stress but as written it's still going to almost always be the same -3 or -4 for everybody and with the same odd bias towards non-physically orientated characters. You could make it simpler and faster in play to just have stress and panic results start at 4+ similar to Panic's 'Keeping It Together' in the current edition. Or else need to add more ways to actually have different Resolve between characters than that single talent which is just a renamed one from current edition and therefore doesn't really make an argument for why Resolve is useful to introduce. IMO Resolve should either be dropped or do something actually radical with it like make it a fifth attribute (without skills) or something purchasable with XP or something like that.

This looks pretty good, and I'm heartened by the turnaround time (and the willingness).

I will point out that the bell curve, per se, wasn't really the problem. In fact, done properly, the bell curve can do both things that seem to be the worthwhile objectives: mitigating the prevalence of Stress/Panic spirals and providing more common, less common, and even rare varied responses.

For example, assuming an average PC Resolve of 4, and Stress of 3, a 3d6 table could put "Keep it together" from <=8 (penis unintentional, but funny), which would produce a response only a little more than 50% of the time*, and would allow 10 other entries of increasing severity. (These numbers would represent my preferences for ALIEN PC competence, but are easily tweaked as long as the math is kept in mind.)

Bell curves really aren't the enemy, I promise.

*Note that with 3 Stress, the table from ALIEN (Unevolved) produces a response 50% of the time.