Factorio Forums

For anyone who doesn't know, with the new experimental 2.1 update you can now transfer items directly between space platforms.

Previously, you had to send items back down to the planet and then launch them back up again with a rocket to get them from platform A to platform B.

While I personally love this feature in concept, I feel like it has a lot of potential to unbalance certain aspects of the game.

The developers spent tons of time going through and meticulously setting weights for each object type, for balance reasons: Bullets are heavy so that you're incentivised to build them in space. There's a lot of important gameplay incentives and careful design here - space platform foundation is expensive to build (at least initially), space and power is limited, and you need to construct platforms in such a way as to maximise space efficiency, which often means cutting corners or creating a spaghetti mess in order to fit everything you need on your limited area - asteroid processing, bullet production, weapons, power generation, etc.

I feel like since 2.1 became available to play, my platforms have mostly gone from complex machines to single-purpose designs. My hauler ships now just request bullets from a platform, and get refilled for free without needing any infrastructure to build ammo of their own. I have multiple platforms that can crush and process large numbers of asteroids, giving a constant stream of resources to any other platform that needs it, so none of my transport/hauler platforms need asteroid processing either.

While I feel this is good for automation overall, this feels like it's removed a key component of platform design and has made designing space platforms significantly more boring.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

I personally feel like this ability should be limited in some way, such as being gated behind a planet-locked research, so that we at least have to spend some time making frankenstein ships before being able to do this.

I really enjoy it so far, now feeling like I'm incentivized to build a fleet of specialized ships instead of every ship really is just a cargo hauler with different specs. IMO, it's better gameplay, especially considering the cleverness you need to do to build buffering depots with radars + circuits.

Having played the Space Exploration mod a lot before Space Age was released, I always thought the meta of making every platform a factory-ship was limiting creativity. I think the new transfer mechanics allow for a lot more interesting specialization for e.g. speed, production, capacity, exploration. There is less incentive to make one "good enough" design and copy paste it for everything.

sarge945 wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2026 4:33 pm and you need to construct platforms in such a way as to maximise space efficiency, which often means cutting corners or creating a spaghetti mess in order to fit everything you need on your limited area - asteroid processing, bullet production, weapons, power generation, etc.

The thing is, this has never *really* been true. It may feel like it, but it never was true. Because weight is such a non-factor for platform performance, you can make the ship longer with very few repercussions. Sure, you have to send more platform foundations, but that's not a very big deal. You can always make more room for more belts, more production infrastructure, etc.

It feels constraining without actually being constraining.

So while you can now make platforms that are dependent on external resources provided by other platforms, such a platform won't be meaningfully better than slightly larger platforms with local production infrastructure.

sarge945 wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2026 4:33 pmI feel like since 2.1 became available to play, my platforms have mostly gone from complex machines to single-purpose designs. My hauler ships now just request bullets from a platform, and get refilled for free without needing any infrastructure to build ammo of their own. I have multiple platforms that can crush and process large numbers of asteroids, giving a constant stream of resources to any other platform that needs it, so none of my transport/hauler platforms need asteroid processing either.

But you do need harvester platforms, right? Platforms dedicated to harvesting chunks and bringing them back for processing.

My interplanetary logistics has been rooted in having transports constantly moving between pairs of planets. So my 2.1 plan is to have those platforms store a quantity of chunks and feed them to platforms at whatever planet they stop at. That is, instead of having dedicated harvester platforms, just have all of my platforms do some harvesting. With enough platforms, you'll have plenty of chunks rolling in without needing a dedicated harvester.

I get where OP is coming from. But the change made the game sooo much better, I can't even begin to describe it. This feature was the missing link (eventhough it still needs quite a few improvement).

I love that the way they implemented it means: All the old designs are still valid. You can still build the same ships you did before and do space logistics without exchanging a single item between platforms. It obviously not the most efficient way.

Plus I have been working on bringing all my production in orbit and it still wrecks my brain somewhat, using circuitry to make sure item get where they should be in the right batches.

It really does not feel like the intended way to play and just making stuff on planet surfaces seems way less complicated and totally viable still. I feel like I am restricting myself more by doing it than I would just send more rockets up constantly. But it's an incredibly new and refreshing way to play that is not immediately obvious. I think there will still be plenty people who prefer to not build everything in space for good reason. It's perfect, really (when the kinks in the platform-to-platform logistics get worked out)

I also felt that the first few trips in space were always I little too hard, when you had little infrastructure in orbit. And this really smoothes it out, because you risk way less by sending just a small ship with a thruster, turret and ammo out there. But you can do it consistently and have the ammo production fully and savely over Nauvis.