My friends and I chose the Expensive science cost scaling preset (linear).
The science cost is stuck at 10,000 and doesn’t increase further (after 20+ techs it’s still 10k). Is this a bug, or is there a cap?

We’ve reached space and can’t craft the Cosmic Criticality Pack because it requires a huge amount of resources.

For example, if we use thorium for cosmic science production, we need about 6–7 million just to research one tech.
Or if we use uranium, with a 0.7% uranium-235 output we end up with huge amounts of (currently) useless uranium-238.

So, the problems are:

We don’t have Covarex to utilize uranium-238.

We don’t have a recycler because we can’t go to Fulgora.

We’re also a bit confused by needing 6–7 million stone per tech.

The only way we’ve found to automate this is using an excavator.
But to do that we need to research Gaia tech and Deep Pumpjack first—and both require Criticality Packs.

We could deplete all our stone to rush through this, but it just doesn’t feel right that the excavator tech is hidden behind two tiers of Criticality Pack science.

Is that the intended design, or is it a bug?
Any suggestions on how to solve this?

Tech tree screen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YRbhQEHxGchC9sqnDup-cag0ve1LVHsP/view?usp=sharing

Save:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cc9QD1SN2h35aLmmkjCmLAxSPrf9b6Th/view?usp=sharing

I can support this in the sense that cosmic criticality packs cause an absurd amount of uranium 238 as byproduct, with no real use. There's no kovarex to turn it into much needed uranium 235 or even some of the other radioactive materials (u233, thorium, plutonium), and burning uranium 235 fuel cells to get other types of fuel cells to use in science is even worse.

The only alternative is doing everything (for the fuel cells) in space, but not only does the uranium refining chain needs a lot of room for centrifuges along with sulfuric acid and other petrochem products, but there is no way to get stone/sand for ceramics in space, so one way or another you need rocket imports to the platform

As for the science cost, there is an option in start-up settings that sets a max limit on science costs

It isn't mentioned and perhaps should be changed so that adjusting the cap sets a floor on it, but the maximum per science pack cost is implicitly set by the starting science pack cost (default 10) X the maximum tech cost multiplier allowed by Factorio, which is x1000.

If set to 10 -> 10,000, 25 -> 25,000, 50 -> 50,000, etc.

It should be possible to adjust it, keep a backup save in case game consistency check error occurs.

Stone is available from crushing Uranium asteroids.

Will take a look at the Excavator science prerequisite tree.

In 1.2.48 Excavator will only require Simulation age.

okay, thank you a lot
will wait for 1.2.48)

Pushed 1.2.48.