Gas Transmission

[nevryn]

Question.. Design feature or bug
In the following setup
Station == Intermediate Planet == gas planet
Setting the Advance dock on the gas planet to Send, and the Advanced dock on the Intermediate connection to the station to Send. Should a gas transfer occur, because it doesn't. In effect the intermediate dock to the station should be the 'consumer' for the gas from the gas planet.
If you put a gas storage tank on the intermediate planet in the 'line' then it behaves.

[Sasheria]

It is a "pulse transfer" of 4 seconds (every 4 seconds)
The side that is "pushing" (deliver gas) will be set, you can see the other side will be the receiver, the max is 100 unit every 4 seconds.

[nevryn]

Originally posted by Sasheria:

It is a "pulse transfer" of 4 seconds (every 4 seconds)
The side that is "pushing" (deliver gas) will be set, you can see the other side will be the receiver, the max is 100 unit every 4 seconds.

Got that.. but with that setup and the tanks on the station, you get no gas to the station, because it does not push gas to the intermediate planet without a tank on the intermediate planet. So that's either a bug or a design decision, hence the question

[Sasheria]

Originally posted by nevryn:

Originally posted by Sasheria:

It is a "pulse transfer" of 4 seconds (every 4 seconds)
The side that is "pushing" (deliver gas) will be set, you can see the other side will be the receiver, the max is 100 unit every 4 seconds.

Got that.. but with that setup and the tanks on the station, you get no gas to the station, because it does not push gas to the intermediate planet without a tank on the intermediate planet. So that's either a bug or a design decision, hence the question

ahh.. that is correct. It has to have a place to "store gas" before pushing to the station. (not sure if that is by design but that seems to be the case)

so on planet side, you have to have storage for the gas to sit before it is push.

[Illuminia]

As Sasheria said, you need somewhere on the Intermediate planetoid to store the gas, before it can go to the next station.

The Dock itself has no storage - so there's no where to "put" the gas coming in between each dock. (and unlike conveyors, pipes do not actually "hold" any amount of material inside during transit. )

Having a gas tank on the intermediate helps act as a buffer in case there is a storage constraint on the receiving side, so it has some utility.

[nevryn]

Originally posted by Illuminia:

As Sasheria said, you need somewhere on the Intermediate planetoid to store the gas, before it can go to the next station.

The Dock itself has no storage - so there's no where to "put" the gas coming in between each dock. (and unlike conveyors, pipes do not actually "hold" any amount of material inside during transit. )

Having a gas tank on the intermediate helps act as a buffer in case there is a storage constraint on the receiving side, so it has some utility.

The storage is on the far end, the pipes through the planet are just a conduit. Given that the Docking to station to the 'Station' is a 'consumer' which is not the same as a tank, then it should 'consume' and thus be transparent to the network.
However, despite the appearance of the docking station being a 'consumer' and having a 'consumption' it apparently isn't a consumer, and technically neither is a tank, so we have a non-consuming consumer, and a consuming non-consumer.

If you connect power and set the appropriate consumer settings then it behaves for power, so water and gas should behave in the same way.

[Illuminia]

Originally posted by nevryn:

Originally posted by Illuminia:

....

The storage is on the far end, the pipes through the planet are just a conduit.

Each station or planetoid is a separate entity - just because you connect a pipe from A<->B<->C doesn't mean that A & C are actually connected to each other.
Just like you can't just draw conveyor belts from one planet/station to another - they may as well be in separate dimensions. (I think we've all tried that in our initial plays and been confused why it didn't work).

It's 3 separate networks with a guarded border checkpoint bridge between each - not one total network.

Dock basically consumes/destroys X amount of resource on one side, and creates/outputs same amount on the other side. It does seem to have some protection for if it is unable to output on the other side , it won't destroy from the input side (thankfully). That's probably what is at play here.
The B->A dock has no "input storage" to accept what the C->B dock is trying to output ; since there's no available "storage", C->B dock does doesn't do anything.


Yeah, it would be nice if you could directly connect a dozen planetoids together with one centralized water or gas storage world with two-way pipe connection between them all - but that's not how the planetoids work.

I was frustrated too, and just found a place to hide a tank on my intermediate planet. Was just glad to now have the ability to transfer gas from one to another...

[nevryn]

It's also interesting in that if you connect water to a station it does store it.. you can see the amount stored rise, even if that is going to be the 'output' side. My 12 ice breakers on the station weren't keeping up and increasing the ice input to them wasn't particularly practical, so I wanted to add water from a connected planetoid, and connected the station to the dock first. It's also frustrating that the transfer is limited to 100 units. At least with power you can transfer more than 1000.

[Klandor]

This all seems totally logical to me. I think it's been said in a number of different ways, but here's my understanding:

1. #A, #B, and #C (be it a planet, planetoid, station, or ship) are all connected to each other via Advanced Dock, one on #A connected to one on #B and a second one on #B is connected to one on #C
   
2. #A generates Water
   
3. #A can transfer to #B ONLY IF #B has an appropriate Storage Device
   
4. #B can transfer to #C ONLY if #C has an appropriate Storage Device
   
5. The transfer is not instataneous, which is why the appropriate Storage Device is required on each location
   
6. Therefore, the transfer is actually going from #A Storage to #B Storage via the Advanced Dock and then a separate transfer is going from #B Storage to #C Storage via their Advanced Dock

Seems clear to me...