This mod is a work in progress!

It is mostly complete, though a few of the later recipes may get small balancing tweaks in the future. No large changes are expected, but Gleba, Aquilo and Promethium packs may have their ingredient amounts adjusted slightly in the future. (I am actively playtesting this mod)

I also plan on updating this page with more information and images at some point too.

Nauviax's Science Overhaul is a mod that aims to require the player to build large and complex factories and platforms without adding lots of new items. For the most part, NSO will only affect your science production lines and leave the rest of your factory alone.

This mod is for you if you want to play basically vanilla Space Age, but also want a reason to build large science production facilities on each planet. I always hated that the new SA science packs were simple and you could beat the game with a single foundry making metallurgic science, so NSO fixes this by making science more interesting and requiring all 3 tier 2 planet packs in more techs.

Nauvis now only has a single science pack, and all packs are now SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive and complex. All tech costs have been reduced to match, and many techs have been combined or reworked. Many early game buildings have been removed, and you will start the game as if all chemical science tech has been completed.

Each planet has a gel recipe and a data recipe, which overall require the player to automate more resources than the base game requires. Nauvis requires uranium, and Vulcanus requires lots of concrete, as an example. Data must be shipped to platforms via MANY more rockets than you would normally need in a vanilla game, and those platforms must convert the data to packs via a third recipe chain that takes trace amounts of promethium gathered during the trips between each planet.

The in-game tips and tricks section contains details on all changes made by this mod, and include tips that may not be immediately obvious. Mod support is low at the moment, but better support is planned in the future. (I have a wip git branch for it)

If your game crashes due to a missing prototype, please don't post a bug report for it. It is almost certainly a mod incompatibility that I already know of and am looking at fixing in the future. (Please do report other sorts of bugs though!)

NOTE

There are some changes made in this mod that I imagine most will not agree with, and I do plan on making these configurable in the future. This includes the removal of many tiers of items like early inserters, wooden poles, tier 1 and 3 assemblers (2 is buffed), mk2 modules, yellow and blue belts (Also prevents any belt weaving until Vulcanus!) etc etc.
(Also I made promethium chunks spoil. I am very much team stop-smuggling-chunks.)

Additionally, INFINITE TECHS ARE GONE. You can research each of these techs a set amount of times, with each level requiring later-game packs to do so. Overall most infinite damage techs are now capped at ~3 levels of vanilla's infinite techs, and productivity in recipes is capped at 100% once you start making promethium packs. This makes the techs you DO get feel more impactful, and will hopefully make you need to expand from your first few patches on the new planets.

I imagine my sense of balance is a bit harsher than others, though I do believe the mod is in a good state currently. I'd be very happy to have others playtest this and let me know of areas that seem too easy or too hard, but do understand that overall this IS supposed to be more expensive than vanilla.

Credit

Art for the data cards, science gel (also the mod thumbnail) and slurries are from Malcom Riley's Unused Renders. (Thank you very much for providing these assets free to all!)