Remove the loss of pressure as pipes get longer.

[chris13524]

I never liked this "feature", as pipes get longer, it requires more and more pumps on it to maintain a 10 pressure. See this: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6066

Unless you can make one pump fast enough to keep a 10 pressure (without needing many pumps), I'd rather get rid of this.

[chris13524]

If you don't do this, maybe larger diameter pipes could be added? Ones that would greatly increase the throughput?

[aubergine18]

I like the feature, it adds to the game IMO. The thing I don't like is that the drop in pressure isn't very well visualised. I know the pipe windows give glimpse as to what's going on, but it would be nice in alt mode if pipes (or the tiles under them) were colorised to show their pressure: green = full pressure, red = no pressure. Also maybe pressure numbers appearing over pipe in alt mode. Then at least you could see where the pressure drops are, and you'd see instant feedback upon adding a pump.

[b38917ce-3ad3-4fae-b]

Regarding discoverability/visualisation, what would be nice to have is a small graph at the bottom of the mouse-over panel showing content/time.

[ssilk]

Hm. I remember some discussions around visualization of pipes, regarding pressure and temperature of the liquid inside.

I see that in the category of "information layers", see viewtopic.php?f=80&t=18153

In that case you can switch the display so, that you see either pressure and/or temp of the pipe system in a way which is more like a schematic view.

I haven't found, what I searched for, but that following pics are somehow a compromise:

[bobucles]

Underground pipes count as two units, even at max length. This will push your network further.

For extreme long distance nothing beats a train. Moving barrels does suck and there should be a better way, but it will work.

[chris13524]

Underground pipes count as two units, even at max length. This will push your network further.

For extreme long distance nothing beats a train. Moving barrels does suck and there should be a better way, but it will work.

I am trying to pump water through a pipe, and the pressure drops after like a few pipes.

[bobingabout]

The way the game works, it's basically designed for pipes with this throughput, if you make them bigger, the fluids don't travel anywhere near as far (it works like using storage tanks as a pipe), if you make them smaller, you just don't have the throughput. I know, my Logistics mod includes pipes with different sizes.

[Klonan]

There are a lot of issues with the fluid system and its internal workings,
So this may or may not become 'fixed' if there is a rewrite of the fluid system

[Deadly-Bagel]

I think the biggest problem with the fluid system is it's so hard to understand =/

Whether this is because it isn't simple or because it's not very well documented, I cannot say. I have briefly looked into it and I know it works off a pressure system but why (when supply is only a trickle) does it so heavily prefer some chem plants more than others, especially those further down the line?

[chris13524]

I think the biggest problem with the fluid system is it's so hard to understand =/

Whether this is because it isn't simple or because it's not very well documented, I cannot say. I have briefly looked into it and I know it works off a pressure system but why (when supply is only a trickle) does it so heavily prefer some chem plants more than others, especially those further down the line?

I think it should work by feeding stuff in one end, and it just dissipates to the adjacent pipes. Every tick, each pipe checks adjacent pipes, if their level is lower, some liquid is moved to those. I see no reason why the throughput should be limited based on it's length.

[ssilk]

I see no reason why the throughput should be limited based on it's length.

It's limited by the pressure (better we call it "level") and the level decreases with each pipe and for many pipes that becomes a length.
That is the reason.

Players (like chris13524) think, the flow in the pipes has some direction cause there is a source (e. g. pump) and a drain (e. g. steam engine).

But the truth is: it's more complex. Direction of the flow is dependent on level of a liquid and goes from high to low level. That is the basic rule.
But: The liquid has a "weight", a mass. It can be, that the liquid flows sometimes "against the stream" because there are some oscillations in the pipes.

That works fine with pipes, that are not empty. But it comes to it's limit, when the pipe is empty. A "piece of fluid" is released on the source and moves through the pipes as a wave - it persist on it's speed, until it comes to the end of a pipe. That stops it and the device in reach gets it first (of course).

Which will lead to stupid situations like that refineries fills fluids only into more distant devices, instead of those more near.

If you know that, you come to the idea, that a simple fluid-tank between source and drain can stop the "mass-behavior" of fluids quite effectively (because they are so much bigger than pipes), fluids become suddenly simple.

[orzelek]

When using tanks remember one thing:
Pump needs to always connect directly to tank. This is very important with modded tanks with much bigger capacities.

This rule comes from fact that fluid flow seems to try and be proportional to volume of neighbouring entities. So if tank is 10% full (still 250 fluid) full 10 units of fluid won't flow in one tick to pipe next to tank (so pump located one pipe from tank can't reach full pumping capacity). If you attach your pump directly it grabs full handled volume from tank.

All of this a bit of speculation - I did lots of experimenting when trying to quickly fill rail tanker from local tankers on oil rig stations. Above rule seemed to make it work fastest.

[chris13524]

When using tanks remember one thing:
Pump needs to always connect directly to tank. This is very important with modded tanks with much bigger capacities.

This rule comes from fact that fluid flow seems to try and be proportional to volume of neighbouring entities. So if tank is 10% full (still 250 fluid) full 10 units of fluid won't flow in one tick to pipe next to tank (so pump located one pipe from tank can't reach full pumping capacity). If you attach your pump directly it grabs full handled volume from tank.

All of this a bit of speculation - I did lots of experimenting when trying to quickly fill rail tanker from local tankers on oil rig stations. Above rule seemed to make it work fastest.

This might be what we are experiencing. (As far as I can tell,) the pipes are forced to only transfer x amount of liquid to adjacent pipes (per tick), then the throughput would be limited (so it would transfer 0.01 at a time or something). This means that the more throughput you stick through a pipe, the less it can fill up.

I'm suggesting that instead of taking this approach (fancy proportions and stuff), the level would equal instantly. So if you have a 2.5k tank, and you stick an empty one next to it, they would instantly equal each other. Same would happen for pipes.

[crysanja]

If you insert alot of pumps into oil pipelines it works just fine, however it was different in the past.

I had actualy far away wells stop working and very little oil reaching refineries, without pumps.


Im more confused with boilers/engines.
It fells so odd to reduce the number of engines from 10 to 8 to 5 or something like that.

[bobucles]

Maybe it would be better to have a kind of "one way" super pipe to handle extreme distance pipeline stuff. I wouldn't know how to make that better than the current system though.

[Optera]

Most of my initial confusion over fluid mechanics came from it prefering certain directions even if both had the same pressure. Real world fluids would perfectly balance the throughput when you merge two pipes at same pressure in one.

When using tanks remember one thing:
Pump needs to always connect directly to tank. This is very important with modded tanks with much bigger capacities.

This rule comes from fact that fluid flow seems to try and be proportional to volume of neighbouring entities. So if tank is 10% full (still 250 fluid) full 10 units of fluid won't flow in one tick to pipe next to tank (so pump located one pipe from tank can't reach full pumping capacity). If you attach your pump directly it grabs full handled volume from tank.

All of this a bit of speculation - I did lots of experimenting when trying to quickly fill rail tanker from local tankers on oil rig stations. Above rule seemed to make it work fastest.

It seems to me Tanks don't like filling the final 100l and also don't like to drain the last 100l.
I used pumps right on the tanks too until i stumbled across the bypass method in a steam engine backup power build. Tried it for my oil tanks and they fill and empty very nicely now.

2016-09-20-08-58-45-5873653.jpg (143.61 KiB) Viewed 7156 times

[Deadly-Bagel]

If you connect a pump directly to a tank, its liquid is directly available to move into the next pipe. When you've got a tank to a pipe to a pump, the pump has to wait for the pipe to fill from the tank which can be significantly slower at low levels.

I think the trickiest part about pipes is working out steam engines. It's easy enough when you connect one offshore pump to 14 boilers to 10 steam engines, but when you start crossing the pipes it gets a bit silly. Steam engines consume all liquid pumped into them so if say you have your boiler output split into two sets of five steam engines, you can have a situation where your plumbing prefers one set over the other and the extra is just destroyed.

Now when you start trying to connect two offshore pumps together and then pass it through two sets of boilers...

Most of these problems are because steam engines destroy everything pumped into them, so it's impossible to create backpressure that can then flow into other channels.

[mrvn]

Most of these problems are because steam engines destroy everything pumped into them, so it's impossible to create backpressure that can then flow into other channels.

Seems to me like you need a limiter to create backpressure before entering the steam engines. Like say a small pump. That limits throughput to 30 fluids/sec. And I think I remember a steam engine needing 6 fluid/sec so that means you can have 5 steam engines behind a small pump.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Pump is half the throughput of a pipe so you can use this to split flow between two sets of five but not five sets of two or three sets of three. Also you then need two pumps per ten steam engines cutting into their power output.