Fluid Purity : an Item-Quality-like mechanic for Fluids

[BlueTemplar]

TL;DR

Quality implemented for Fluids in a freely-mixing, less-processing-blocking way.

What?

Fluids would now have a Purity value.
It would be treated mostly (but not exactly like) as Item Quality in most recipes.

With values of
90% Purity ~ Normal Quality
99% ~ Uncommon
99.9% ~ Rare
99.99% ~ Epic
99.999% ~ Legendary

EDIT : 0.) fluid Purity would be colour-coded too, on a non-linear gradient, for instance : 98%, 99.8%

But, unlike for Item Quality :
1.) lower Quality Recipes would still accept higher Purity fluids as ingredient :
a Normal Quality recipe would still consume a 99.46% Purity fluid.

2.) The same fluid of different Purities could be freely mixed, just like the same fluid of different temperatures can be freely mixed :
100L of 90% Purity fluid A mixed with 100L of 99% purity fluid A would result in 200L of 94.5% Purity fluid.

3.) Quality modules would work like this on Purity :
a +100% quality processing of 90% purity of fluid B into fluid C would always result in a fluid C of 99% purity :
(+100% <=> impurity (= 100% - purity) divided by 10)
90% +50% quality => 95% purity
90% +10% quality => 91% purity
95% +100% quality => 99.5% purity
95% +10% quality => 95.5% purity
(+X% <=> impurity divided by X/100×10)

4.) Quality (better than normal) recipes using fluids as ingredients would now require a minimum purity :
for instance you would now be able to make directly Uncommon quality Holmium plates (without quality modules), but they would require at least 99% Purity Holmium solution
but then you would also need to provide enough of at least 99.999% Purity both molten Iron and molten Copper to (directly, with no quality modules) make Legendary Low Density Structures from legendary Plastic bars.

5.) You would now be able to get back fluids (of potentially higher purity, with quality modules) from Recycling.
However, this would require a new "super-recycler" building :
higher tech / potentially higher tech ingredients than the basic recycler
bigger footprint (so that there is space for one input and multiple output pipes)
Basic recycler would probably still use the old recycling recipes.
(Implementing a way for the basic recycler to also use barrels for fluid output, without recycling them, seems unrealistic ?)
EDIT 2 : Some items would keep using the old, simple (into themselves) recycling recipes, rather than the normalized ones, for gameplay or realism reasons.
The super-recycler might maybe recycle relevant items into also molten iron/copper, rather than plates (where appropriate).

6.) This probably ought to be implemented as an optional modmod requiring the Quality mod.

7.) As an experiment : Speed modules would actually be allowed to lower the Quality effect for fluids into negative values, worsening Purity.
(Probably not below the "Normal Purity" 90% though ?)

EDIT 3 :
8.) Barrels :
(maybe the biggest snag)
it's one thing for barrels to not preserve fluid temperature, and it be reverted to the default 15°C upon un-barreling,
(though mods, and even Space Age's Fluoroketone, have to use separate fluids / items as workarounds)
but it would be much more problematic for them to not preserve purity !
I can see a couple of solutions :
- bite the bullet and allow for barrels to have a purity value (and a temperature as well, while we're at it), averaged over a stack, like spoiled percentage currently is.
- or, like for other recipes, clamp down the value, so for instance barreling 99.8% purity water would result in a barrel of Uncommon Water.
(might or might not even go the extra step for the simplicity of handling barrel storage, and make the above recipe require Uncommon Barrels only.)

Why?

This has the potential to make fluids more interesting for those playing with Quality,
would allow to experiment with an alternate way of doing 'quality',
might even help with various issues, including balance ones, that Quality currently has !

Related :
Higher Fluid Consumption for Quality Recipes
Cannot make Holmium solution with quality Holmium ore
Output more fluid when using higher quality recipes (i.e. for Holmium Solution)
Have excess quality act like a durability bonus
Remove quality from items that don't benefit from it or allow "any" quality when crafting fluids
[boskid][2.0.11] Recipes with only liquid output allow Quality modules
[2.0.60] Recipes with no item ingredients do not produce quality items
Ignore Fluid signals at "Quality Transfer"

[eugenekay]

Adding another mix-able property to Fluids seems like a lot of Effort, would take extra calculations each tick that the Fluid system is active, and it is not clear what the "impurity" would even be? Water or something? And another Recycler building too?

I think that re-purposing the Temperature mechanic is something that a Mod could actually implement.

[waterBear]

Do you need a special recycler for this? Once something's been made with the fluid (eg. iron plate) it already recycles into itself, as does Holmium plate, for the very reason that it can come from ore or a liquid. AFAIK all such items do. By your own rules, the creation of pure fluids is deterministic so there's no "upcycling" concept here. If anything it gives you one more roll when you cast-to-plate (or use a recipe like LDS) which is already superior to recycling anyway.

Seems like a neat idea, if done right. In the same way that a heat exchanger is "low temperature" when below 500 C and won't do anything, an uncommon plate casting foundry won't do anything unless the purity is at least 99%. Might match existing code, or so it would seem from the outside, as long as you don't complicate it.

[mmmPI]

Sounds very complicated to use for me and to implement ( like a major change of philosophy).

I understand the similarities with temperature, in the way you describe the mixing, it also reminded of chemistry particularly dilutions.

I think you also need to adress how in practice players could make setup, if the recycler output fluids, it will force onto most players that want to recycle "sulfur" ( made out of 2 fluids ) some pretty hard setups, the way fluid could "freely mix" works only if it's the same fluid. Maybe item made of several fluid should always recycle in themselves ? That would work for vanilla+space age i think, but it would not fully be "quality for fluid", if player use other mods with their recipes.

Overall i don't expect this to happens, but i would really like to be surprised

[h.q.droid]

I'd say rather than recyclers outputing fluid, one could have a barrel input slot in the recycler and some of them eventually get filled with random generated fluid. Un-barrel-able fluids are gone forever. Having barrels could also reduce pollution.

It's thematic in that when crushing stuff for recycling, juice would spill everywhere and you'd have to scoop them up with something. There could even be some visual animation of an upside-down barrel where the smoke normally comes up.

[BlueTemplar]

Adding another mix-able property to Fluids seems like a lot of Effort, would take extra calculations each tick that the Fluid system is active

Well, only Wube knows how expensive it is in practice, and while this was one of the reasons why they thought about removing temperature completely, note that they instead doubled down on it, notably with the use of nuclear reactors on space platforms and heat pipes on Aquilo.
And then also, if I am not mistaken, since 2.0 fluids became simpler than even heat pipes ?

, and it is not clear what the "impurity" would even be? Water or something?

That would depend on the fluid. For instance it obviously wouldn't be water for Water.
It's not clear either what 'productivity' or 'quality' are, and how a 'module' would help with them, especially for things as different as coal and flying robot frame. They are abstracted too for gameplay purposes.

I think that re-purposing the Temperature mechanic is something that a Mod could actually implement.

Maybe, but then it would need to remove the existing fluid temperature features. Arguably barely used in vanilla and even Space Age, where a few distinct fluids could be probably used instead (as already happened with the separation of water into water and steam) but some mods do play more with fluid temperature.

----

Once something's been made with the fluid (eg. iron plate) it already recycles into itself, as does Holmium plate, for the very reason that it can come from ore or a liquid. AFAIK all such items do.

Depending on what you mean by 'such', not all : for instance batteries, or big mining drills or processing units and quantum processors.
But looks like I forgot to write out the thoughts I had about what ought or ought not be recycled and how. Will edit.

I guess that here we have the issue of needing to keep some semblance of realism about what is ultimately possible to recycle.
It shouldn't be easy, or in some cases, possible at all, to recycle petroleum gas back into crude oil, or plates into ore !

This is probably another reason why this recycling with fluids ought to be higher, futuristic tech, like superconductors or fusion reactors, whether through a different building or not.

And there might be gameplay-related reasons for blocking normal (super-)recycling in favour of the simple one, or to something else altogether (note how, despite what the description says, not ALL biological items are recycled into spoilage).

Thankfully, now with the introduction of recycling recipes into the Factoriopedia, this is all more legible.

And now I realise that it might be interesting that the "super-recycler" would have its own set of recycling recipes, so for instance anything that can be made in a Foundry (like belts, pipes, concrete, low density structures...) would be super-recycled into molten iron / molten copper instead of iron/copper plates.
One more reason to have a new building.
And sounds like requirements (for unlocking these super-recycling-recipes at least) might be (at least) Fulgora + Vulcanus.

By your own rules, the creation of pure fluids is deterministic so there's no "upcycling" concept here.

I don't see how one requires the other. Lack of determinism only makes upcycling more complicated, by (IIRC) requiring a potentially infinite buffer, due to gambler's ruin.

If anything it gives you one more roll when you cast-to-plate (or use a recipe like LDS) which is already superior to recycling anyway.

Yes it does. Normalising (some more) recycling recipes from their simple versions. With the extra complexity, and depending on the situation, processing cost that this involves.
Yet again, the Fluid Purity modmod would also changes recipes so that you cannot cheat legendary LDS from 'normal' (molten) iron/copper.

A big question is whether more normalising of recycling would make for better or worse gameplay ? More consistent doesn't necessarily mean better gameplay.
But this is probably a question that cannot be answered without playtesting, especially not considering the complexity of Space Age.

Seems like a neat idea, if done right. In the same way that a heat exchanger is "low temperature" when below 500 C and won't do anything, an uncommon plate casting foundry won't do anything unless the purity is at least 99%. Might match existing code, or so it would seem from the outside, as long as you don't complicate it.

Yeah, it wouldn't be completely blockage free...
Makes me think how in Pyanodons steam can get stuck in the fluidbox just in front of a Steam Engine if its temperature is lower than 100°C in 0.16. (Fluid temperature didn't propagate by touch, only by mixing.)
Which could have been a fatal flaw in my suggestion.
But I suspect that fluid changes in 2.0 removed this lack of fluid temperature mixing issue ?
So, unlike for heat pipes, there's still no 'propagation' of fluid temperature, but now instead of being 'stuck', it's all instant for each fluid 'network'?
Related : Temperature Combinator

----

Sounds very complicated to use for me and to implement ( like a major change of philosophy).

Yeah, so was quality itself. But in some ways it's easier than quality, so, combined, the result might be easier too ?

I understand the similarities with temperature, in the way you describe the mixing, it also reminded of chemistry particularly dilutions.

Yeah. IMHO in this case it's better (if slightly awkward) to use %, rather than the standard nomenclature for homeopathic dilutions (with the potential negative associations those probably have for Factorio's typical player).

I think you also need to adress how in practice players could make setup, if the recycler output fluids, it will force onto most players that want to recycle "sulfur" ( made out of 2 fluids ) some pretty hard setups, the way fluid could "freely mix" works only if it's the same fluid. Maybe item made of several fluid should always recycle in themselves ? That would work for vanilla+space age i think, but it would not fully be "quality for fluid", if player use other mods with their recipes. [...]

There seems to be some misunderstanding here ? In the case that sulfur would indeed be allowed to use a normalized (super-)recycling recipe into water and petroleum gas, you would just have the reverse of the initial recipe : one item goes in, 2 fluids go out, from 2 different pipes.
It's no more complicated than a recycler setup, potentially simpler in fact in the case of quality, since you don't need to deal with 2-5 versions of each item, that, on top of that, are produced randomly.

This discussion made me think that an early version of fluid recycling might (somehow ??) be available earlier than the normal recycler.
But sadly it might be too late in Factorio's development process for that, you might need to redesign a large chunk of Space Age for such an integration (different Fulgora ? a whole new planet ??)

----

And another Recycler building too?

Do you need a special recycler for this?

The above is why there probably needs to be a separate, larger, super-recycler building : to account for pipes.
(Can even buildings with pipe inputs/outputs not be square ?)
Mods can hack around this, but with professional quality graphics that Factorio has, potential pipe outputs need to be considered, ideally also accounting for mods.

----

I'd say rather than recyclers outputing fluid, one could have a barrel input slot in the recycler and some of them eventually get filled with random generated fluid.

As you can see, I considered it, but it just seems to be too complicated to implement. But maybe I'm wrong ?
Right, with barrel's discrete nature involved, we would be back to a random process. (At least for some recipes, those not returning enough fluid, and also not for questions of fluid Purity, which would still be non-random.)

Un-barrel-able fluids are gone forever.

Some of them might still be un-barrel-able for purposes of suspension of disbelief or gameplay (lava, some Aquilo fluids...)

Having barrels could also reduce pollution.

It's thematic in that when crushing stuff for recycling, juice would spill everywhere and you'd have to scoop them up with something. There could even be some visual animation of an upside-down barrel where the smoke normally comes up.

Right, battery recycling might get messy !
Well, this sounds like this goes much further than Space Age (or even my suggestion) currently does.
But mods have experimented with pollution spills before : for instance pYanodons has a "Tailings Pond" that can store liquids, and 'accepts' an unlimited amount of them, but then once over its nominal capacity, 'overflows', and creates "spilled ground" around it that greatly slows you down. Depending on the overflowing fluid and its amount, it also creates more or less pollution. (Gases immediately 'overflow' and are not stored, and also don't create "spilled ground", but do - pollution.)

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
EDIT 3 :
8.) Barrels :
(maybe the biggest snag)
it's one thing for barrels to not preserve fluid temperature, and it be reverted to the default 15°C upon un-barreling,
(though mods, and even Space Age's Fluoroketone, have to use separate fluids / items as workarounds)
but it would be much more problematic for them to not preserve purity !
I can see a couple of solutions :
- bite the bullet and allow for barrels to have a purity value (and a temperature as well, while we're at it), averaged over a stack, like spoiled percentage currently is.
- or, like for other recipes, clamp down the value, so for instance barreling 99.8% purity water would result in a barrel of Uncommon Water.
(might or might not even go the extra step for the simplicity of handling barrel storage, and make the above recipe require Uncommon Barrels only.)
[...]

[mmmPI]

Yeah, so was quality itself. But in some ways it's easier than quality, so, combined, the result might be easier too ?

My opinion is that fluid sushi are quite difficult for most players because they often require internal knowledge about how the game treats things beyond what is necessary to "beat the game". Quality can be simplified for some players by looking at other's build and recipe and doing the same, but here it's also going to require player to be able to debug their setup, to understand that a tiny bit of fluid in the middle of a pipeline can cause problems, and to battle with the fluid-mixing prevention system that doesn't let you connect some pipes sometimes. It may result in something "simpler" than quality, but i'm skeptic ^^

IMHO in this case it's better (if slightly awkward) to use %, rather than the standard nomenclature for homeopathic dilutions (with the potential negative associations those probably have for Factorio's typical player).

I'm more used to count in ° like for alcohol, if you have 4° in 25 cl, it's the same amount of alcohol than 8° in 12.5 cl, or a shooter of 2.5 cl at 40°, dilution is like adding soda, those are close to actual % with slight nuances if you account for mass or volume, since the density is not the same as water Now in your description it's the opposite, the increase in quality is like a concentration, like a distillation for alchohol to make it stronger by removing the water.

I think the idea fits with the quality mechanic, what you described, the 99.9999% being legendary, the way you would need a lot of 90% and less to achieve a very high concentration, i think fluids are a thing that suits this, but i don't see how in game it doesn't turn into a very finicky system to use if it can be made to work in the first place.

There seems to be some misunderstanding here ? In the case that sulfur would indeed be allowed to use a normalized (super-)recycling recipe into water and petroleum gas, you would just have the reverse of the initial recipe : one item goes in, 2 fluids go out, from 2 different pipes.
It's no more complicated than a recycler setup, potentially simpler in fact in the case of quality, since you don't need to deal with 2-5 versions of each item, that, on top of that, are produced randomly.

The 2 pipes output works in some way but that also means mods shouldn't make item that require 3 fluids, each potential output require a dedicated slot whereas for items it can be the same inserter that output them on a belt filtered later with splitter, for fluid if you have static setup where the recycler will have always the same input it's not so complicated, but as soon as you try to have a recycler array that recycle different products which have different fluid output it is in the territory of "more complex than quality" to me.

Though you make good points, you made me think off filtered pump, one per fluid, not duplicated for all quality level, that would negate some of the potential complexity i anticipated, players don't have to use the worst method possible x) Now i think it wouldn't feel like a polished feature if there's not some pumps or additionnal filter or valve in the vanilla game to help manage with filtration , but it must be possible to still make it work with current tools if the recycler has different output slot per fluids.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, so was quality itself. But in some ways it's easier than quality, so, combined, the result might be easier too ?

My opinion is that fluid sushi are quite difficult for most players because they often require internal knowledge about how the game treats things beyond what is necessary to "beat the game". Quality can be simplified for some players by looking at other's build and recipe and doing the same, but here it's also going to require player to be able to debug their setup, to understand that a tiny bit of fluid in the middle of a pipeline can cause problems, and to battle with the fluid-mixing prevention system that doesn't let you connect some pipes sometimes. It may result in something "simpler" than quality, but i'm skeptic ^^

At that point in the game new players would have hopefully learned the best rule of dealing with different fluids sharing a single pipe : DON'T.
(That is, if they even managed to end up in such a situation, as the game itself doesn't let you do that in many cases since 0.17.)

Setups using different fluids sharing a single pipe is a challenge for very experimented players, so I'm not sure why we're even discussing them here ?
P.S.: Ok, I get now what I had missed, see towards the end.

IMHO in this case it's better (if slightly awkward) to use %, rather than the standard nomenclature for homeopathic dilutions (with the potential negative associations those probably have for Factorio's typical player).

I'm more used to count in ° like for alcohol, if you have 4° in 25 cl, it's the same amount of alcohol than 8° in 12.5 cl, or a shooter of 2.5 cl at 40°, dilution is like adding soda, those are close to actual % with slight nuances if you account for mass or volume, since the density is not the same as water Now in your description it's the opposite, the increase in quality is like a concentration, like a distillation for alchohol to make it stronger by removing the water.

I think the idea fits with the quality mechanic, what you described, the 99.9999% being legendary, the way you would need a lot of 90% and less to achieve a very high concentration, i think fluids are a thing that suits this, but i don't see how in game it doesn't turn into a very finicky system to use if it can be made to work in the first place.

Right, also with distillation you usually don't throw away 75% of the total volume at each 'step'.
(It could also be directly noted as impurity : 10%, 1%, 0.1%...
but 90%, 99%... seemed better to me. Maybe I'm wrong.)

There seems to be some misunderstanding here ? In the case that sulfur would indeed be allowed to use a normalized (super-)recycling recipe into water and petroleum gas, you would just have the reverse of the initial recipe : one item goes in, 2 fluids go out, from 2 different pipes.
It's no more complicated than a recycler setup, potentially simpler in fact in the case of quality, since you don't need to deal with 2-5 versions of each item, that, on top of that, are produced randomly.

The 2 pipes output works in some way but that also means mods shouldn't make item that require 3 fluids,

That's why I linked SE's «Final Boss». But now I realise it only has 2 different fluids as inputs !
And why I suggested a big building (5x5 at least ?). It probably ought to be able to support up to 3 input and 3 output pipes. Using only 2 sides, like the Oil Refinery does, might or might not be easier for the player.
Mods that go even wilder in terms of input-output fluids can make their own super-recycler.

each potential output require a dedicated slot whereas for items it can be the same inserter that output them on a belt filtered later with splitter, for fluid if you have static setup where the recycler will have always the same input it's not so complicated, but as soon as you try to have a recycler array that recycle different products which have different fluid output it is in the territory of "more complex than quality" to me.

Oh, right, I forgot that you could make setups where a single recycler is fed different items.
(For my automated ones, I usually use a single input item... with very rare exceptions where multiple quality versions of the same item are fed to the same recycler.)

Well, this too is the player making it harder on themselves...

I don't remember now why I avoided doing this when Space Age came out, but there probably were very good reasons involving blockage ?
(I'm currently back from Aquilo, redoing my Fulgora setup, and happened to randomly do this once for non-scrap, before quickly scrapping it as I thought of a better upcycling chain. Thanks, I'll try (consciously) experimenting with it, it will probably save me on the soon to be unlocked legendary quality modules !)

One heavy-handed solution to this might be to have the player select a fixed recycling recipe. (Think assembling-machine-like rather than furnace-like.)
A less heavy-handed solution (but requiring extra work for Wube) would be a quality-blind recipe selection.
Another interesting solution might be to leave it furnace-like, but tactically select default pipe outputs (and inputs) for recipes, so that the combinations of recipes deemed 'easiest' by Wube do not have different fluids overlapping the same pipes (easier if the building has more potential pipe in/out-puts).

Though you make good points, you made me think off filtered pump, one per fluid, not duplicated for all quality level, that would negate some of the potential complexity i anticipated, players don't have to use the worst method possible x)

Yeah, that's what I meant. With quality items, (barring feeding it to an active provider chest), on output you have to duplicate either filtered splitters, or filtered inserters. PER output item.
It's not too bad while still having to deal with only 3 qualities, but the setup grows super-linearly once unlocking the 4th and especially the 5th one...
With purity it would only be a single output pipe (per output fluid).

Now i think it wouldn't feel like a polished feature if there's not some pumps or additionnal filter or valve in the vanilla game to help manage with filtration , but it must be possible to still make it work with current tools if the recycler has different output slot per fluids.

Oh, absolutely, just like how we had spoiled priority added to inserters with the addition of spoilables, or how you can read accumulator charge level.

[mmmPI]

Well, this too is the player making it harder on themselves...

Yes, i was picturing a terrible setup like the worst case scenario, which would be a nightmare to handle, but you made me think of the easiest i could try to imagine.

One heavy-handed solution to this might be to have the player select a fixed recycling recipe. (Think assembling-machine-like rather than furnace-like.)
A less heavy-handed solution (but requiring extra work for Wube) would be a quality-blind recipe selection.
Another interesting solution might be to leave it furnace-like, but tactically select default pipe outputs (and inputs) for recipes, so that the combinations of recipes deemed 'easiest' by Wube do not have different fluids overlapping the same pipes (easier if the building has more potential pipe in/out-puts).

The fix recycling recipe i think would help for static setup, so you know which pump to filter beforehand and which liquid will flow from which output. It could be used for a system where the fluid aren't freely mixing too, as if you create a duplicated version of fluid for each fluid, 10% 50% 90% 95% 99% would be an extended version of "heavy oil" and "light oil" available for each fluid.

I think for freely-mixing setup the same problem than with fluid temperature occurs, namely the lack of control, it should also be possible to read the % of purity from a tank, like you could do with quantity, otherwise i think it would limit the possiblities to design around the mechanism. Though atm you can't read spoilage level from chest and it can still be handled so maybe i'm just overestimating the difficulty to make such setups.

It also made me think of centrifuge as a thematic building regarding the proposition, currently it doesn't accept fluid, but what you describe ressemble a bit an enrichment process, in the way the concentration should be increased for higher quality, if the recycler is too small to fit all the fluid slot maybe it's possible to stick a few pipes connexion on a centrifuge, possibly making it a 4x4 or 5x5 in the process, possibly easing the difficulty with pipes in too tight spaces.

I still think the whole proposition isn't super realistic at this stage of the development, but now i'm curious / want to try in game to see if it's possible to actually make it work in practice, like making setup with the idea, because with the filtered pump setup or static recipe i can't picture where it would fail, it doesn't sound problematic anymore, but it's hard to make a demo setup in my head to confirm everything can be made to work be fine at this stage.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]

One heavy-handed solution to this might be to have the player select a fixed recycling recipe. (Think assembling-machine-like rather than furnace-like.)
A less heavy-handed solution (but requiring extra work for Wube) would be a quality-blind recipe selection.
Another interesting solution might be to leave it furnace-like, but tactically select default pipe outputs (and inputs) for recipes, so that the combinations of recipes deemed 'easiest' by Wube do not have different fluids overlapping the same pipes (easier if the building has more potential pipe in/out-puts).

The fix recycling recipe i think would help for static setup, so you know which pump to filter beforehand and which liquid will flow from which output. It could be used for a system where the fluid aren't freely mixing too, as if you create a duplicated version of fluid for each fluid, 10% 50% 90% 95% 99% would be an extended version of "heavy oil" and "light oil" available for each fluid.

Yeah, but up to 5 non-mixing fluids (for each purity) per current fluid would be even more of a nightmare to manage than the up to 5 (only 'mixing' in recycler) items (for each quality) per item that we have now, especially since we have a LOT more tools (including player's hand and inventory) to deal with items.

I think for freely-mixing setup the same problem than with fluid temperature occurs, namely the lack of control, it should also be possible to read the % of purity from a tank, like you could do with quantity, otherwise i think it would limit the possiblities to design around the mechanism. Though atm you can't read spoilage level from chest and it can still be handled so maybe i'm just overestimating the difficulty to make such setups.

Spoilage is on items though, not fluids (see above). (We probably cannot read it for gameplay purposes, so there's an item flow puzzle to solve.)
Well yes, at the very least being able to read purity on tanks (how else would you control it ?), not sure about pumps and machines ?

It also made me think of centrifuge as a thematic building regarding the proposition, currently it doesn't accept fluid, but what you describe ressemble a bit an enrichment process, in the way the concentration should be increased for higher quality, if the recycler is too small to fit all the fluid slot maybe it's possible to stick a few pipes connexion on a centrifuge, possibly making it a 4x4 or 5x5 in the process, possibly easing the difficulty with pipes in too tight spaces.

Yeah, I think I thought about it at some point too − sadly it might be a bit late at this point of development, to completely overhaul uranium enrichment in the official game... (and for the fluid purity modmod only !)
(BTW, centrifuge is quite an expensive building for only a 3x3 !)

I still think the whole proposition isn't super realistic at this stage of the development, but now i'm curious / want to try in game to see if it's possible to actually make it work in practice, like making setup with the idea, because with the filtered pump setup or static recipe i can't picture where it would fail, it doesn't sound problematic anymore, but it's hard to make a demo setup in my head to confirm everything can be made to work be fine at this stage.

Yeah, I wonder if, like eugenekay said, a modder could make a prototype hijacking fluid temperature...
(But I first have my first Space Age game to complete... )

[mmmPI]

Spoilage is on items though, not fluids (see above). (We probably cannot read it for gameplay purposes, so there's an item flow puzzle to solve.)
Well yes, at the very least being able to read purity on tanks (how else would you control it ?), not sure about pumps and machines ?

Yeah indeed no spoilage for fluid, that's yet another level of madness i haven't seen proposed yet x). I think reading purity on tank would be required indeed, so it's possible to create a "smart" system. Maybe on some valve too that would let the fluid pass only if purity has reached a certain %.

The idea to use different non-mixing liquid would make it very clumsy in game, but the implementation would be the most straightforward i thought, it wouldn't be as you describe initially, but a cruder version to refine.

Yeah, I wonder if, like eugenekay said, a modder could make a prototype hijacking fluid temperature...
(But I first have my first Space Age game to complete... )

I always had this impression that temperature on fluid was about to get removed, since with the non-mixing fluid and the 2.0 fluid mechanic update, but it still there, so maybe x)

[eugenekay]

I always had this impression that temperature on fluid was about to get removed, since with the non-mixing fluid and the 2.0 fluid mechanic update, but it still there, so maybe x)

That seems doubtful; Steam/Water was "simplified" in v0.15.10 but Temperature has remained despite the internal proposal to remove it, and at this point it sure seems to be a Permanent Feature. Removing Temperature from Space Age would break Fusion Reactors' Neighbor Bonus system. Changing it to output "more Plasma" would break the Fluoroketone cycle's balance.

[mmmPI]

That seems doubtful; Steam/Water was "simplified" in v0.15.10 but Temperature has remained despite the internal proposal to remove it, and at this point it sure seems to be a Permanent Feature. Removing Temperature from Space Age would break Fusion Reactors' Neighbor Bonus system. Changing it to output "more Plasma" would break the Fluoroketone cycle's balance.

That's a re-insuring thought That's also where i'm wary for the change now ^^ But in the meantime it makes me reconsider mods that change the fusion reactors and and piping for plasma now as i'd be doing if there was a mod such as the proposal for fluid-with-quality

[BlueTemplar]

Right, Plasma is a fluid, even if cannot be piped normally.
(I guess Wube could still remove temperature from all other fluids, or rework Plasma (Heat Pipes using a different mechanism anyway).)

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Going back to centrifuges, I can't believe I forgot to link this very «Factorio scaling» story !
An Engineering History of the Manhattan Project − Construction Physics (SubStack, sorry)