In one of the happier endings to occur in games this week, impossibly enormous resource management sim Factorio has just released its last-ever major update – version 2.1 – on its stable branch. As previously heads-upped by developers Wube Software, 2.1 doesn’t make any big new additions to its planets or tech trees, but does sneak in more than 30 quality of life improvements and minor new features for both the base game and its Space Age expansion. Including, they say, “the things we wanted to do for 2.0 but didn’t have time for.” Nice to get a few final pieces out the door before it closes, eh.
There’s also an updated trailer, if you want to watch promotional footage for a game that may well have enveloped your every waking moment since 2016.
Watch on YouTube
Here are some of those changes I’ve picked out at random. “Mixed rockets: Rockets can now carry multiple different items in one launch, so no more sending a full stack of everything just to build a small platform.” Nice! “Land mines can be used as tripwires and enemy detectors.” Devious! “Asteroid damage now depends on the asteroid’s remaining health instead of its speed, so it is much more predictable.” Convenient! Not counting how you’re still being hit by an asteroid. There’s also now the ability to play Space Age without the controversial Quality mechanic, as well as the ability to flip pumpjacks and burner miners instead of merely rotating them, like some loser.
The 2.1 update also gives Factorio one last graphical polish, including a handful of new models and a “new pump rendering system that can connect to fluid wagons no matter how cursed your station is.” I’m merely pretending to be a Factorio expert for the purposes of publishing this article, though I will say – from experience building piplines in Deep Rock Galactic – that a series of tubes is only truly cursed if it still works, in spite of itself, at transporting liquids. Otherwise you’ve just got a pile of broken pipes, again, like some loser.
This isn’t the end-end of Factorio, which Wube Software have said will continue to get bug fixes and support-level updates while they largely move on to “other game prototypes/experiments.” Though even if it was, it’s had a bloomin’ admirable run, starting with four years of early access – successful enough to cement it as the de facto basis for later automation-builders like Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program – and continuing to enrapture aspiring industrial managers into the present. Ollie has over 1,000 hours in it. Maybe I’m the loser for making light of it.