[Suicide Junkie]

I had an idea along those lines, where there would be a shift in the physics of the universe every now and then.

For the first year, it might be "normal", but in the second year, explosives would triple in strength.
The third year, shields would become impenetrable.
The fourth year, all technology with a requirement exceeding level 3 would lose its abilities.
The fifth year, the tech would extend up to level 6, but beam weapons might all suffer power loss at range of 1/r.

And so on...
There could be facilities that can forecast the future physics... Just edit the facility description to say what you want.

The problem I've run into is lack of free time.