The core of this mod is that the draft and the overheat mechanic are meant to be played together, not as separate features — overheat is what gives the draft its stakes. Strip out overheat and you're left with a random tech tree and a bit of novelty, but none of the "push it too far and it bites back" tension that makes the draw feel risky. Mining (manual or automated) toward a threshold pops a pack of tech cards; picking one unlocks research access (access, not completion — you still queue it up and burn science packs). Odds aren't flat: hub techs that unlock the most downstream research get weighted higher, and techs that keep getting passed over trigger pity protection so nothing gets stuck forever. Automated drills build up heat as they run, and higher heat throttles how much of that output converts to tech points (your actual mining speed is untouched); manual mining generates no heat and actively cools drills down — you can run flat-out forever, but your own automation will eventually punish you for it. The point is removing the certainty a normal tech tree guarantees, forcing you to solve problems with whatever tech you already have. This is public domain, so anyone comfortable modifying Lua (or working with an AI to do it) is free to rebalance it however they like — including gutting overheat entirely for a pure-draft experience — but that changes what this mod is actually about, and that trade-off is yours to make.

Experimental prototype built for Factorio 2.0; Gleba's agricultural towers and Vulcanus's lava extraction aren't currently touched by this system. Pacing and thresholds are currently tuned against Space Age progression, not the base game alone — it will load and run fine without Space Age, but expect the pack-opening rhythm to feel different, as base game hasn't been balanced independently. These values come from calculation and targeted tuning, not a full playthrough; no complete gameplay validation has been performed for either configuration. This mod hides parts of the vanilla tech tree behind the draft; if you plan to remove the mod later, run /draft-reveal-all first to restore full vanilla visibility — this is irreversible and should be done before uninstalling, not after. Feedback and bug reports welcome in the discussion tab.