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Steam Engines acting strangely

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:06 pm
by dankellys
I have an issue in a vanilla map im working on. Currently I have five nuclear setups, which should generate 1.4GW of power each. However, I am only getting 4.9GW from them, as some of the turbines aren't running when they should. Due to this, my base is now suddenly under powered.

The attached image demonstrates the issue. Look at the turbines on the right hand side of the layout (ignore the left hand side, i was missing a heat pipe there, which I have placed since taking the screenshot). As you can see, only some of the turbines are running, when all of them should be. From what I can see there are no missing pipes. I find it particularly odd that all of the steam engines furthest from the boilers are running, but many of the ones in between are not.

Any help would be much appreciated.

EDIT: I should add, this blueprint worked fine in 0.16, so I am assuming its a change that came in 0.17 that is causing it?
steam_turbines.png
steam_turbines.png (1.46 MiB) Viewed 1731 times
EDIT 2: This only seems to happen when I start running close to the maximum power output. Now that I have placed down another nuclear array, they are all running again:
runningFine.PNG
runningFine.PNG (3.11 MiB) Viewed 1720 times
excessPower.PNG
excessPower.PNG (1.51 MiB) Viewed 1720 times

Re: Steam Engines acting strangely

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:51 pm
by disentius
not enough info.
Can you post a save or a blueprint?
Then we can have a look.

Re: Steam Engines acting strangely

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:50 pm
by mmmPI
my thought from the pictures
steam_turbinesguess1.jpg
steam_turbinesguess1.jpg (385.98 KiB) Viewed 1696 times
Can't be sure thought i'm not rebuilding the whole thing to test it with 1 more lane of heat pipes :D

Re: Steam Engines acting strangely

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:28 pm
by Serenity
Heat pipes have a limited effective distance and it's less the more power you have. It basically acts like a fluid. I had a similar issue with this design:
Steam.jpg
Steam.jpg (180.36 KiB) Viewed 1683 times
The double heat pipe left and right there really helps. In your case maybe move up the heat exchangers and and put a second line of heat pipes at the bottom

But the biggest problem with your design is all those intersections with the steam turbines. With the way the fluid system works it's a really bad idea to allow steam to "decide" where to go. That usually results in issues like that. What works best is to only have one independent row for water pump -> heat exchangers -> turbines. Except for sharing water pumps you mostly have that with the exchangers, but then your turbines are a mess.
What works well is 1 pump -> 12 heat exchangers -> 20 steam turbines

Re: Steam Engines acting strangely

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 5:50 pm
by Xeorm
My bet would be that the heat from some of the reactors isn't getting all the way through. Should manually try looking at portions of the heating pipes to see if there's issues. Running another line or two of heat piping over might help out as an easy fix.