Factorio 2.1 has moved from experimental to stable after a summer of public testing, which puts mixed-item rockets and platform-to-platform transfers in front of the players who stayed on 2.0.
The Factorio team calls the release a large collection of quality-of-life changes, small features and polish, not a drop of new planets, enemies or research trees. The release lands two years after the Space Age expansion, and the first group of changes the team lists is space logistics.
In 2.0, building a small space platform meant launching a full stack of every item it needed, so a small platform could request 10 to 20 rockets and still leave plenty of unused items. Rockets can now carry several item types in one launch. According to Factorio developer Genhis, silos with automatic requests turned on assemble the batch themselves, working through requests one at a time from the lowest request count. The aim is to deliver one-off construction orders before bulk goods such as calcite from Vulcanus or planetary science packs.
Platforms can also trade with each other. An orbital request now names its source: the planet's rocket silos, platforms in orbit over that planet, or both. A checkbox on each platform decides whether it supplies others. The developers suggest buffer platforms in orbit for quicker turnaround, and seeding larger platforms with some ice, carbon or iron ore so they bootstrap faster. Hub requests can be set through the circuit network, and a radar Universe mode lets planets and platforms swap signals on a shared channel.
Platform balance changed during the experimental period too. Asteroid damage now follows an asteroid's remaining health instead of its speed, and the platform hub has more health and resistances. Early 2.1 builds let a medium asteroid do 3,200 damage to a platform in orbit, according to the Factorio developers. Version 2.1.13 cut all asteroid damage to stationary platforms by 90 percent, which brought that hit down to 320. Version 2.1.21 lowered medium asteroid damage again, to 2,000 against a moving platform and 100 against a stationary one. In 2.0, a medium asteroid did about 67 damage to a stopped platform.
Several smaller changes ship with it. Space Age can now be played without Quality. The Recycler has moved into its own mod, and Quality is a recommended dependency that is on by default. Quality modules no longer work in asteroid reprocessing. Biter expansion groups scale with evolution, and exploring the map early no longer thins out expansions near a base. Factorio also runs natively on ARM64 Linux, which the team says covers Steam Frame, Raspberry Pi headless servers and Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon MacBooks.
Saves from 2.0 will load in 2.1, but some changes, such as the new split of circuit reads and writes across wire colors, may break existing factory designs. Once updated, saves and blueprints cannot be moved back to 2.0, so the team recommends backing up both first. Most popular mods were updated during the experimental period, though some may not be ready yet.
