Factorio Forums

If you place 2 Electromagnetic plants such that the input/output of Electrolyte are adjacent, then place a pipe on another input/output of electrolyte, heavy oil just shows up where Electrolyte should be.

Then after removing the additional Electromagnetic plant and placing a pipe in the Holmium Solution input, it was also filed with heavy oil

If you pump out the heavy oil from the pipe you can get it to properly output the Electrolyte.
Also if you rotate the plant. It completely converts the contents of the Holmium solution pipe with Heavy oil.

We finally updated our server to 2.0.10. Bug is still present.

The fluids get into the pipes and need to be removed if you rotate them around. nothing is being converted, just you aren’t seeing all the fluids in the pipes at a glance. You can click one of the pipes to show everything in them and to remove the fluid you don’t want.

We aren't rotating anything, this is before/after we are placing pipes. There is no rotation happening here

But when you rotate it once the electrolyte output rotates to the holmium solution input. But for some reason the holmium solution input turns to heavy oil when the input for heavy oil never touched that pipe.

Regardless that doesn't explain the other behavior. I can provide a save file if desired. I'm also willing to hop on a discord call and show the problem if desired.

Issue still present on 2.0.11

Can you give me a save file and reproduction steps to take a freshly build electromagnetic plant and get it into this state?

I get the same problem, I think: whenever my Holmium solution runs dry, the electromagnetic plants seem to output electrolyte on the holmium solution input.
I tried combatting this with pumps, but even then the electrolyte fills the pipes behind the pumps, all the way into the supposed-to-be holmium solution tanks below.

I was able to recreate this however, like mentioned you can click on the pipe and remove the "back filled" fluid.
Attached are pics of my tests.

Setup:

Pics 1-1 through 1-3 : Setup

Test1:

Pic 1-4 : Shows that the plant back fills the system with electrolyte
Attach empty pipe to electro plant. Pic 1-5 : Shows connection of Holmium second

Test2:

I have reloaded my save prior to hooking up the empty pipe
Pic 2-1 : To Holmium first
Attach empty pipe to holmium. Pic 2-2 : Then to electro plant

Results

Same thing occurs and backfill is pushed through the holmium "input" side of the electromagnetic plant.
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Thank you for writing this up DragoonGXG. I haven't had time the last few days. I'm glad someone else is experiencing the same issue haha. Seems like if you don't rotate the plant or let the inputs run out its fine.

I will also attempt to describe some of the other behaviors i have seen.

First putting down the plant Then when selecting the recipe it pumps the heavy oil from the top into the bottom pipe with the holmium, even though both are attached on the electrolyte sides
You can clear the heavy oil on the bottom pipe and it also clears the heavy oil on the heavy oil input on the top and replaces it with holmium solution.


Then after rotating the plant 1 time (so the heavy oil is on the top and holmium solution is on the bottom) you can then properly clear the contents of both pipes and the plant is usable.


The plant is now in this state. properly functioning. If you rotate the plant a single time so the heavy oil in on the right and electrolyte is on the top and bottom it fills the holmium solution input with heavy oil. even though the heavy oil input never touched the holmium solution pipe
I would imagine this has something to do with the ports on the plant being both inputs and outputs for each. And it not respecting that you shouldn't be able to connect pipes with different fluids. Please let me know if you need me to clarify anything further.

I have also seen some oddities with the EM plant when crafting electrolyte. If I place it, plumb the inputs, and let it run without anything connected to the outputs, the electrolyte just vanishes, rather than building up in the output slot. After something is connected, once that is full, then the EM plant's output slot builds up. (I'm currently on 2.0.13 with this issue).

coderjo wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2024 2:40 am I have also seen some oddities with the EM plant when crafting electrolyte. If I place it, plumb the inputs, and let it run without anything connected to the outputs, the electrolyte just vanishes, rather than building up in the output slot. After something is connected, once that is full, then the EM plant's output slot builds up. (I'm currently on 2.0.13 with this issue).

I noticed the output vanishing bug, exactly as you describe.

Related to OP's report:
I also noticed some machines stopped working when I was building the EM plant, and then I found out that a lubricant plumbing (with a full 25k tank) got emptied out and replaced with 300 units of Holmium solution were in the tank.
I have the game autosaving every minute so I'll try to see what triggered it and upload the save file & instructions to reproduce the bug

Edit:
Added autosave6 in which the lubricant already vanished and was replaced with holmium fluid before even setting a recipe in the EM plant.
The weird thing about this is that this pipe bugged out as well Edit again:
I couldn't reproduce any of the problems after loading from old saves. Seems like after loading the savegame, the EM plant started behaving properly and the electrolyte no longer vanishes.
I also tried setting up the EM plant again and it just worked normally and didn't mess with the lubricant. So my guess is that the problem is related to something that is not part of persistent game state.

I think the fluid swap might be unrelated to the EM plant, because it happened around the time I was setting up the plant, but happened before I even set the EM plant recipe.
Unfortunately the problem happened too long ago and I dont have an autosave from when the lubricant still existed (only a manual save but in that one I didn't even have the EM plant, and when I tried reproducing the issue with that save, no bugs happened)