Nuclear Steps
You discover a new system, with enriched radioactive isotopes and ferocious celestial objects. A landable asteroids field, a smothering black hole, and a glaring white hole lie ahead. Master a system-wide nuclear enrichment chain, tame the spatial beasts for resources and unlock new interstellar powers.
This mod expands Space Age content. The new system is unlocked right after Gleba : you don't need to have any other planet completed to play. It is considered safe to add this mod to an existing save (more information below).
Nuclear Steps is currently a work in progress. It contains about 8-10 hrs of playtime, and has a temporary ending so playing it feels complete.
If you play Nuclear Steps and have any feeback, idea, suggestion, comment or simply wanna chat, please reach out on discord ! https://discord.gg/cRR6Vrqz76
The Asteroids Field
The Asteroids Field contains asteroids big enough to build a base on. Early scannings show the presence of a new metal : Lead, but more importantly of highly radioactive elements.
The Black Hole & The White Hole
The Black Hole is currently not playable. It will be insanely dangerous to approach but you will be able to harvest its might.
The White Hole is currently not playable. It will feature new ways to collect items in space and generate huge amounts of matter.
Content
You will play with a system-wide enrichment chain, starting from the raw lead found in the asteroids field up to the volatile and hazardous Neptunium. Each step of the chain will require new ressources and crafting chains somewhere in the system.
Some items will spoil, most often in new and useful ressources. It will sometimes be a desired outcome, and sometimes not. Certain radioactive isotopes have a half-life, meaning when spoiling they have 50% chances to spoil into themselves, effectively resetting their freshness timer.
Each new ressource and crafting chain will come with a new challenge. Some will require routing based on spoilage state. Some will alternate between high-activity and inactive phases. Some will require to distribute production across entire regions.
You will unlock powerful new tools, including new logistics for space platforms, a powerful new ressource extractor with the hydraulic fracker, an upgraded centrifuge in line with space age planet-specific buildings, and a new way to map your surrondings, among other things.
I want to hear your thoughts !
If you have played this mod and have anything to say : a feedback (negative feedbacks welcome !), a suggestion, a general feeling, or simply wanna chat, please reach out on discord !
=> https://discord.gg/cRR6Vrqz76 <=
Development state
The first asteroid field space location is available to play, and has en ending.
Early playtesting sessions have shown the time to complete the current content is about 10 hours for players unfamiliar to modded factorio. Expect less if you are experienced with modded games.
The next steps in the building of this mod are to rework the space locations structure (mostly merging asteroid field locations), expand the first space location gameplay, and then work on the black hole and white hole content (not necessarliy in this order). Nuclear Steps was in idea form since March 2026 but I mostly built it since the end of June 2026 : you can use this for estimating for when next content might be released.
The goal of releasing the mod with this amount of content is to validate my fundamental design ideas before building more of it, and overall get feedback.
Languages
Currently available in French and English. Please contact me if you want to add another language !
Adding to an existing save
The mod is meant to be safe to add to an existing save. It tweaks a few vanilla entities in a way that doesn't change their perceptible behavior. The only reason these changes would break anything is if another mod would wildly change vanilla entities, and both changes making them explode for some reason.
Whatever the announced risks and compatibility, always backup your save before installing a mod.
Credits & Acknowledgements
Author :
Neomorphos
Thanks :
- Hanodest for their help on procedural generation
- the many people on the mod-dev-help factorio discord chanel
Assets :
I took many images from the internet for prototyping purposes, please find the full list and their respective licenses in the credit.md file in the mod.
No AI was used in the making of this mod.