I prettymuch agree with your initial assessment.

If you can grab better Food-Modules and the Claymore-Mine you are mostly set to do it.



While I don't quite agree with some of you suggestions, One of them is so good, that I'd really like to see it being considered by the Devs:



That is the cost-scaling of one minor-modules if you want to use more than one of a type per room. I'd say that is a brilliant solution to:

a) increase the usefullness of science

b) make it less relevant that there are severe balance issues among them

c) increase overall variety



I also like the idea of researching a global level-cap but then having to put a little extra science-points to upgrade each individual module. Not much, just a little so you need to have some science for this. I also wouldn't necessarily limit this to major-modules. So maybe 2 Science per Level for Majors and 1 for Minors.