Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Show fluid temperature in storage tank and pipe gui

What?

Here is an example of what it could look like, done with a (jank) mod

Why?

It is weird that fluid temperature is shown in the tooltip when hovering over a tank or pipe, but when opening their gui, this information is not present, even when hovering over the fluid icon.

+1, being able to see the temperature anywhere at all in this gui would be very nice

+1000
That's a great idea, how did I not realize that before?!

+1

But temperature is constant for all liquids. Is it a change that only makes sense for steam?

iPilot wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 9:23 am But temperature is constant for all liquids. Is it a change that only makes sense for steam?

If liquids are at default temperature, i think temperature should not be shown.
I don't know about space age, but in base game, yes, only steam would be affected. It is still a useful information considering heat exchangers output higher temperature steam than boilers.
In lots of mods however fluid temperature matters more, and having this information tucked away into a tooltip where its easy to miss makes it really easy to accidentally mix fluids of unwanted temperature, and then take a while to figure out what's wrong as, again, its easy to miss.

Space Age only adds one fluid with variable temperature: Plasma, and it can't be stored in pipes or tanks. Other mods definitely do have more usage for fluid temperatures, from recipes that only accept inputs of specific temperatures, recipes that output specific temperatures, entities that can be powered with heated fluids other than steam, etc. Technically speaking, fluoroketone could probably be made into a single fluid with two temperature values, rather than two separate fluids, and the lack of the communication about fluid temperatures is probably one of the biggest reasons why. (Checking the fusion reactor and generator prototypes, their fluoroketone ports can specify minimum and maximum temperatures, letting behavior match what it is currently if they were implemented to use them.)

Better communication of fluid temperatures would've helped a lot when I couldn't tell why the steam I was making with a Corrundum recipe wasn't making as much power as I expected. Turns out the recipe only made 100° steam, and since the rest of the fluid system was being fed with 500° steam, that also could've contributed to why it wasn't draining as fast as I thought it should.