The title is mostly a joke: while by default PTSd does attempt to substantially increase the challenge of combat, exploration, trading, farming, etc. while reducing many "overpowered" income options, you can reduce most of that back down with the in-game Difficulty Settings. Even with the default settings, a number of activities / rewards / costs are actually improved from vanilla, such as Settlement rewards, the loot from most exploration activities, Class upgrade/Pet unlock prices, larger Refiner stacksizes, etc. And much of the mod is not centered around difficulty at all, but instead on improving balance or adding new options.

Goals of this mod

If you enjoy starting new save files, the sense of progression of a new character through the early & middle portions of the game, and start to lose interest once your character has unlocked everything and can do anything easily, and prefer choices without overpowered or underwhelming options, PTSd may interest you. Covering many aspects of the game through a wide range of cost/value/reward adjustments, rebalanced equipment stats, and a few added features, PTSd aims to:

• Remove or restrict most "overpowered" get-rich quick schemes, such as market crashing, chlorine refining, Activated Indium mines, scrapping Interceptor ships, etc.
  

• Stretch out the early & mid-game so the player is not able to immediately buy any & everything. Generally there will be more time where the player can be "looking forward" to unlocking various tech or features that are currently unavailable or unaffordable.
  

 

• Make buying & using weaker C Class ships or upgrade modules early on more appealing, as the higher class items should be expensive enough to prevent the player from simply always just buying the highest quality options available.
  

• Make it more rewarding when the player eventually is able to get higher class starships / multi-tools or better exocraft, or invest upgrades into them, especially since enemies / the environment are challenging enough to appreciate the added ease / convenience they bring. Generally there will be a more noticeable gap between the performance of a fresh Class C piece of equipment, and a maxed out Class S full of upgrades.
  

 

• As much as possible, avoid situations where either one playstyle is so clearly superior to the alternatives that they aren't worth considering, or the inverse where an option is completely underwhelming compared to others. For example, in Vanilla an Activated Indium mine or Fusion Ignitor farm are orders of magnitude more profitable than any other activity, while conversely Settlements, salvaging Crashed Freighters, or rescuing Freighters from pirates typically provide so little reward that it is hard to justify the time taken to do them. In PTSd the rewards of many activities are more comparable, although they each still have advantages or disadvantages.
  

 

• Relatedly, in general reduce the gap between "passive" forms of income such as Extractors/Farms/Frigate Expeditions and "active" income such as exploring, finding & selling valuables, destroying spaceships, completing space station missions, etc. so that "passive" income doesn't completely overshadow "active" income, and "active" play is encouraged more.
  

 

• Similarly, differentiate & balance the Multi-Tool / Starship weapons and Multi-Tools / Starships themselves so that there is no "clear winner" which is statistically superior to all the others. E.G. Why pick the Neutron Cannon when the Scatter Blaster kills everything much quicker? Or why pick a Hauler when you can upgrade an Exotic to just as much storage with excellent stats? Or why pick a Royal/Experimental/Pistol when an Alien Multi-Tool has higher Damage, and the Mining or Scan stats provide negligible benefits? In PTSd the various kinds of equipment and weapons are both made more distinct from each other with more noticeable differences in speed, abilities, etc. while still making sure each has a specialty or niche that makes it worthwhile. For example, the Mining and Scan stats for Multi-Tools now directly improve the resources / units you receive when mining/scanning things.
  

• Add more ways of steadily earning Nanites throughout the game.
  

• Add more ways of obtaining Tritium, Di-Hydrogen & Salvaged Data to the mid/late game.
  

• Correct a few Vanilla bugs such as the Ship Agility stat only affect maneuverability while boosting, or supercharged slots making mining lasers mine slower instead of faster.
  

Changes Made & Reasoning

The individual changes made are too many to list, but here is the "bullet point" version, along with the gameplay reasons for how they help achieve the goals above. Note that many of these changes are designed to work together, E.G. player starship shields are increased, but enemy ship damage and groups are increased even more. The actual individual value changes made to the game can be seen within the .lua files for the mod.
Note: Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any changes listing a multiplier, such as "increased by 2.5x" or "reduced to 0.8x," means that value is now equal to (2.5 x [the vanilla value]) or (0.8 x [the vanilla value])

Progression Changes

Passive Farming/Mining Changes

Activity Reward Changes

Recipe Changes

General Difficulty Changes

General Balance Changes

Weapon Balance Changes

Starship Balance Changes

Multi-Tool Balance Changes

Usage

PTSd is mainly balanced around the "Survival" preset with the starship target assist disabled, although other presets/settings are still affected. Also, some of the Recommended Mods below work very well alongside PTSd. Generally PTSd aims to address different playstyles / strategies directly, however there were a few things I was unable to change:

• If playing on Permadeath, it's highly recommended to still periodically back up your save files, given how it's possible that some of the changes may inadvertently lead to unexpected insta-kills, especially on top of any vanilla glitches.
• While PTSd has the biggest impact when starting a new save file, it also works on existing saves. If continuing an existing non-PTSd save, several things such as which recipes are unlocked from the start, various inventory sizes, the stats of your existing starships / freighter / multitools will retain their old values. Upgrading its Class (A to S, etc.) will cause it to use updated stats, or you can use a Save Editor to manually change the inventory sizes & stats to match PTSd values, or to forget certain recipes. Also be aware of possibly losing some resources from full stacks if changing to a smaller stack size. 
• It should be safe to disable PTSd and continue playing the savefile in Vanilla, or even to temporarily disable PTSd and re-enable it later on (Just be aware of how high you have your valuable resources stacked if moving to a lower stack size). 
• The mod is balanced around not using the initial free freighter. The best workaround I know so far is to just do it on the "honor system": either continually reject the free freighter offers until you buy your own, or accept the initial free freighter, rename it to "No Man's Freighter" or something, and then never interact with or set foot on it until you are able to purchase a new freighter of your own (and then take into account the trade-in value of the free freighter when buying your "real" freighter). 
• I haven't found way to effectively alter exosuit Cargo inventory, so currently balanced around stopping at 40 Exosuit Cargo slots (only upgrading it 16 times from the initial size of 24) and 40 Exosuit Tech Slots (only upgrading it 35 times from the initial size of 5).
• I haven't yet found a way to make "normal" Sentinel Pillars work the same way the ones do in the "Trace of Metal" questline, so it is just on the "honor system" to actually defeat the nearby drones / Sentinel Mech before using the terminal to shutdown all planetary Sentinels.
• Similarly on the "honor system" to defeat the attacking Pirates before docking with a freighter for the reward.
• I wanted to avoid changing much related to Nexus Missions / multiplayer activities, so again it would be on the "honor system" not to use the free system warp that many Nexus missions start with to gather currently unavailable resources such as Cadmium / Emeril / Indium before you have the appropriate Drive technology.
• It's also on the "honor system" to use your starship's warp drive to travel between space stations / trade outposts in different systems for doing bulk buying/selling of trade goods / illegal contraband instead of safely using your Freighter's teleporter / hyperdrive and/or Freighter base Trade Terminal. (There is an optional setting in gBase Items BasicX.lua for users to optionally disable the player from constructing Teleporters in bases or freighters. The player can still teleport to their base / freighter regardless. Similarly, there is a toggle FreighterRoomsPlanetside in gBase Items BasicX.lua to control whether you can construct Freighter-only objects / rooms in planetside bases or not.)
• Since Community Expeditions often change up the normal gameplay progression, sometimes PTSd will "block" progression within an expedition by requiring certain items / materials the player can't get access to in order to build items / tech required to advance the expedition. If this happens, you can try temporarily setting crafting to "Free" in the in-game settings, use a Save Editor to give you the needed items / tech, or temporarily disable the relevant PTSd module while you craft the required item. For most cases with an issue during an Expedition, I believe the only module you should need to temporarily disable while crafting any needed items / techs would be the "PTSd Prices and Tech and Starship Speed and More" module (specifically, to disable the "PTSd Tech + Upgrade + Recipe + Blueprint cost Rebalance.lua" and possibly the "PTSd Resource + Product + Construction Rebalance.lua" .lua files which make changes to tech & item blueprints/recipes)
• Finally, as with most gameplay-altering mods, playing in multiplayer when not all the party members are using the same mod loadout makes it likely that you and others will see / experience different things. E.G. the number / position of enemy sentinels / starships, or the current weather. Most notably, for certain multiplayer Nexus missions involving Target Sweep, the mission marker locations may not be displayed for all party members. To resolve this particular issue, you can use the optional PTSd Missions and Rewards - No Farther Target Sweep module in the Optional Files section with the PTSd Farther Target Sweep.lua file excluded in place of the default module (or re-pak it yourself with AMUMSS). This reverts the distance from the "Approximate Location" for most Target Sweep missions back to vanilla distances
  

Current Known Issue:

• Rifle & Sentinel Rifle Multi-Tools may currently use the one-handed "pistol style" grip animations instead of two-handed "rifle" style grip, still looking into possible solutions without having to expand Multi-Tool inventory sizes. Can be toggled off in "PTSd Ship+MultiTool Rebalance.lua" (will also increases max slots on affected tools to 30)
• When Multi-Tool Mining Lasers overheat, the UI (in 3rd person mode) incorrectly shows the much shorter vanilla cooldown time, so you will still need to wait several seconds after the overheat bar empties before you can use the Mining Laser again. These changes to the overheating cooldown can be toggled off in "PTSd Weapons Rebalance.lua"
• There seems to be a vanilla issue where at certain planetary locations such as Planetary/Colossal Archives, Pirate Raids use their default spacefighting AI & damage levels while targeting the player directly instead of the weaker "Raiding" behavior which targets buildings. Since PTSd increases the damage of Pirates in space-fights, when this issue occurs in PTSd it will usually be instantly fatal if you are caught aboveground/outdoors / outside your starship when it occurs. Some more details in this post.
  

Some general advice for the different playstyle PTSd is aimed at:

• Both planetary and space combat is intended to be difficult enough that while you should still be able to handle minor threats right from the start, ideally you should be unable to defeat every possible enemy with just starting C class Multi-Tools / Ships and no additional weapons / shields / upgrade Modules. Things such as large groups of pirates, "Hard" level random Bounties / Pirate-hunting space station missions, or Sentinel Mechs / Walkers will typically require much better equipment, tech, and upgrade modules to take down. Avoiding or bribing enemy ships early on is much safer, and the less valuables you carry the cheaper bribing will be.
• Since the starter multi-tool still comes with 0 bonuses just as in vanilla, getting a better C or B Class Multi-Tool as soon as possible can make a noticeable difference, as does getting a few cheap C Class shield/weapon upgrade modules for your starship at your first space station. In particular since your Multi-Tool's Mining and Scan stats now directly affect the resources & units you receive from mining & scanning, getting a decent Pistol can help a lot early on. And since the adjacency bonuses for many upgrade modules can be stronger than the modules itself, getting 3~6 C Class upgrades positioned well might be stronger than just one or two A/S class upgrades.
• Dealing with the reduced inventory size can be helped early on by making use of the improved range of the Teleport Receiver which can make your ship act as a sort of "second backpack", or using Exocraft as "mobile storage containers" you can summon to any planet if you keep geobay ingredients on you.
• Similarly, to help with the increased distance of many "Target Sweep" missions, using either a ridable pet buffed with some recommended mods below,  the buffed Rocket Boots tech, or buffed Exocrafts can help you get around faster. 
• For collecting larger amounts of resources, since the fully automated mineral & gas extractors have more restrictions and require Indium to start using, you may get more use out of the cheaper PTSd-buffed "fuel-powered" alternatives until later in the game (the AMU, Oxygen Harvester, etc.). Since they all now complete a cycle in 10 minutes (or just hit "C" to half-fuel them for 5 minutes if needed), keeping construction materials in your starship and placing multiple nearby when you land on a planet can collect resources while you do other tasks until you return to your ship. Or, consider having some placed at your home base that you refuel (and possibly move or delete/replace to fix bugginess) each time you return home to run while you sort out your inventory, tend to crops, run refiners, etc. Especially if you use some short-range teleporters to quickly access multiple deposits. Alternatively, making use of how a Multi-Tool's Mining stat increases yield in PTSd, alongside supercharging the Mining Laser and Optical Drill, and using the Mining yield boost of a Radiation Storm, you can get around ~6x the base substance yield with an S Class Pistol.
• Higher Ship Class makes a bigger difference in PTSd, as do Pulse Engine / Launcher upgrades if attempting to outrun enemy starships. I recommend first having reserves of Sodium Nitrate / Starshield Batteries on hand if planning to engage in prolonged space combat, as you ship shield will likely go down quickly & often.  The Emergency Warp Unit may be very appealing early-game, as it can let you escape unwinnable space encounters early on.
• For both Multi-Tools & Starships, a big advantage of higher Classes in PTSD is the additional Supercharged Tech slots, since for combat having the core weapon tech on a Supercharged slot is almost mandatory to have a fighting chance against many enemies, especially early on.
• Remember on death you will only lose items in the Inventory of whatever your current mode of transport is, so if your ship goes down, items in your Exosuit or Exocraft will be safe.
• Similarly, do not expect to be able to complete all 5 possible Frigate Expeditions each day without having high-level Frigates and an assortment of Frigate-boosting upgrade modules in your Freighter.
• The intention behind removing many of the "quick & easy" money-making schemes while making most tech / upgrades / blueprints / starships more expensive to obtain, is that when faced with a particular item that is currently out of reach, the player might just continue with other quests / endeavors and making do without the item while "saving up" for the item in the meantime. This is opposed to dropping everything else to do nothing but continually grind for the missing resource, which will likely take a while now.
  

Customization

While there was a good deal of testing & spreadsheets involved in tuning PTSd, ultimately balance and difficulty are subjective things. However, as explained in the first few bullet points of the "General Difficulty Changes" section above, you can now adjust much of this in-game through the various Difficulty Settings options. Also, since the .lua files for PTSd are provided, you can open them with most text editors such as Notepad++ and change the values to your liking, then run the .luas through AMUMSS to make your personal version of the mod with different values.

Certain .lua files such as gDamageX.lua, Space Combat+Larger Space BattlesX.lua, _Extra Savage Sentinels by ExosolarX.lua and PTSd Weapons Rebalance.lua all have a few settings right at the top of the .lua file for quickly adjusting many values all at once, for things like damage dealt / received by the player from creatures/sentinels/starships, and enemy starship hull / shields. 

For users unable to use AMUMSS, in the optional files section there is a version of the PTSd Missions and Rewards module with the "Farther Target Sweep" changes removed.

While the various changes in PTSd are generally designed to work together and not individually, I made it somewhat modular as a last resort for those with any issues with a particular module; it now comes in multiple .paks to be used all together just like before, or you can remove individual modules if absolutely necessary (with the caveat below). E.G. removing the module which increases incoming damage, or the module which increases combat & hazard difficulty.

While the modules are mostly grouped according to similar topics, I'm limited by which files each one affects, so certain topics may have changes spread between multiple modules. E.G. While "PTSd Prices and Tech and Starship Speed and More.pak" makes unlocking crafting recipes cost 10x more,  "PTSd Missions and Rewards.pak" is what makes Manufacturing Facilities balance that out by awarding 10x the Factory Override Tokens.
Please check the individual .lua files to see exactly which changes you may be giving up by removing a particular module. Recommended to edit the .lua files and re-pak with AMUMSS rather than removing entire modules to avoid accidentally removing other changes.



From the wiki:

• Browse to No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\PCBANKS.
• Delete or rename the DISABLEMODS.TXT file.
• Create a folder named MODS.
• Place mod .pak files into the MODS folder (they have to be in the folder itself and not in any subfolder).
• Start the game and wait for the splash screen to disappear.
• If done correctly the game will display a warning just before displaying the selection of saved games.
  

PTSd will likely conflict with many other gameplay-altering mods, as it affects a wide range of .MBIN files including:

And many others.
However, the .lua files for PTSd are also provided in the download, so you should be able to easily merge this with most other mods by using AMUMSS following these steps for merging mods.

Included Mods

With permission, the following mods have been adapted for balance with PTSd and included as part of it:

• Unique Exocrafts by jackty89
  

Increases speed & boost for exocrafts (edited to tone down speed buffs and improve certain vehicle jumps).

• Portions of Unique Space Ships by  jackty89
  

Mod framework used as basis for a variety of ship rebalancing

• Reduced Launch Cost 2.1 by Lexman6 & maintained by Lo2k
  

(Edited to reduce base Survival launch cost from 50% to 41%, so the "Efficient Thrusters" tech will let all starships make 1 additional takeoff per refuel)

• Living Ship Upgrades by LazMonk
  

Allows Ship Teleporter, Economy & Combat Scanners to be installed in Living Ships, increases their speed & maneuverability with pulse engine upgrades. (edited for toned down Living Ship speed & maneuverability)

• New Milestones by Lo2k
  

Rebalances the requirements for earning Milestones (Edited to balance some of the requirements around PTSd settings & pacing)

• Space Combat Reworked - and Larger Space Battles by Xaliber13
  

Increases the health, firerate, aggression, speed, handling, and number of enemy spaceships, and causes most space battles to involve more spaceships of both enemies & allies. (edited for increased health & firerate, lower number of enemy ships, and other adjustments)

• Further adjustments to Space Combat Reworked by Estel1
  

Significantly increases the damage that NPC starships/freighters do to each other, both ally & enemies (does not affect damage to the player).

• Exosolar's Savage Sentinels by ExoSolar & Babscoole
  

Improves sentinel health, attack rate, behaviour, aggression (edited to improve Sentinel Mech behaviour, drone movement speed, drone search time, drone crime vision radius)

• ExoSolar's Super Ship Teleporter by Exosolar & Babscoole
  

(Edited to tone teleporter range down to ~750u)

• Portions of gExo's Challenge Modpack by Exosolar & Gumsk
  

No market crashing, increased exosuit slot prices, farther initial crashed spaceship on new games, longer and more frequent storms (especially on Extreme Weather Planets)

• gDamage - Damage Difficulty Mod by Gumsk
  

Increased damage taken by the player from all sources

• gCreatures Predators - Difficulty Mod and gCreatures Predators Frequency - Difficulty Mod by Gumsk
  

Increases predator aggression & frequency (edited to maintain species sync with vanilla players)

• Gumsk's Base Building - gBase by Gumsk
  

Increases base size and variety of usable parts (edited to reduce extractor rates, extractor & silo storage, limit the number of extractors & silos per base, return some vanilla restrictions to certain planetary machines being buildable on Freighters, and reverted the initial base building radius to vanilla size to avoid hassles from a vanilla bug)

• gMech - Exomech - Mech Improvements by Gumsk
  

Improves Minotaur speed, handling, and jumpjets (edited to reduce the rate that jumpjets recharge)


While there are countless other mods I would endorse, these mods specifically enhance the challenge / balance that PTSd is aiming for:

• No Danger Marks by Lo2k (No merging required)
  

Crucial mod which makes planetary threats such as hostile Fauna or Flora actually threatening, encourages situational awareness

• Asteroid Fields 2.7 by Lo2k      (No merging required)
  

Groups asteroids into medium-sized fields with lots of empty space in between them. Helps to have more room for space dogfights.

• Gumsk's Cameras - gCam by Gumsk      (No merging required)
  

Aside from improving various on foot / exocraft cameras in general, the much faster "zoom out" when using Waypoints / Beacons / Signal Scanners helps exploration go a bit faster.

• Companion Behavior Adjustments by thealchemist1654     (No merging required)
  

Makes animal companions perform useful actions often enough to be noticeably helpful and worthwhile

• Companion Riding Improvements by aharttsx(Merging required)
  

Helps prevent animal companions from despawning when walking too far from them, makes them much easier to steer and faster while riding, better camera control while riding. Makes companions a useful stepping-stone for travel until exocraft are unlocked

• Multi-Tool Mining Speed Fix 1.9 by Lo2k (Merging required)
• Fixes Multi-Tool mining laser tech / upgrades so that they properly increase mining speed. Very useful for the increased amount of mining you might be doing with PTSd. Seems to have been fixed in Vanilla now.
• UninstallCoreWeapons by jackty89  (Merging required)
  

Allows you to uninstall the Photon Cannon or Mining Laser from starships/Multi-Tools. Aside from the QoL, this helps you make the most of the more limited inventory slots with PTSd.


A huge thanks to Babscoole, Gumsk, jackty89, as well as the rest of the modders here and the No Man's Sky Modding discord for all their help and guidance for getting into NMS modding, and maintaining the tools & mods to do so.