Pipe throughput - am I missing something?

[Areebob]

Pipes claim to have a max throughput of 7200 LPM. Each individual fluid node pulls 450. to max out a single pipe, you need to use all 16 nodes, yes?

My issue is I have a couple crystal makers hooked up to ONE pipe. Each one uses 600LPM. I should be able to have 12 hooked up to one maxed out pipe, but...I can't. I can have 3. After that, they start slowing down. Doesn't matter if I have 7200 coming in on the far end, or 1800 (four fluid nodes), I get the same result. What am I doing wrong?

[Dragonmaster]

Launchers have a 1600 limit

[Shabazza]

A screenshot would help.
You always hook up 4 pumps per pipe. So you can pump 4 full fluid pipes worth of paint.
On full upgrades, a singe paint pipe can supply 3 crystal generators.
So with a full pump platform, you can supply 12 crystal generators, filling 4 lanes with crystals.
But you need to separate each set of 3 crystal generators.
Dedicate 1 fluid pipe for each set of 3 gens.
You can't just merge all fluid pipes and redistribute. At least not without a fluid tank.
But that's just unnecessary to do if you keep em neatly separated.

[Areebob]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

Launchers have a 1600 limit

AH, so I have to combine onto a pipe ON the station I want to use it on, not before. WELL, if that's true, then I found a bug. During my testing, I put an island in between where I was building. each pipe should have 1800 in, and 1800 out, yes? I put a fluid buffer tank on the island, and connected two of the incoming pipes to it, which should have 3600 going into the tank, and only 1800 coming out, but the tank doesn't fill at all unless I disconnect the outgoing line. it SHOULD be filling at 1800LPM, since half of what's being fed into it can't leave.

[Areebob]

So instead of 12 incoming lines of shapes, to match 12 incoming pipes, I need 24 incoming pipes to max out production on the line. OK, I got this.

[Dragonmaster]

Originally posted by Areebob:

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

Launchers have a 1600 limit

AH, so I have to combine onto a pipe ON the station I want to use it on, not before. WELL, if that's true, then I found a bug. During my testing, I put an island in between where I was building. each pipe should have 1800 in, and 1800 out, yes? I put a fluid buffer tank on the island, and connected two of the incoming pipes to it, which should have 3600 going into the tank, and only 1800 coming out, but the tank doesn't fill at all unless I disconnect the outgoing line. it SHOULD be filling at 1800LPM, since half of what's being fed into it can't leave.

Fluid tanks also have a lower limit on them

[elidoran]

Paint/pipes work differently than belts/shapes. I'll link below a comment I made in another discussion on paint.

Paint is different than shapes/belts. It's best to stop thinking of them as the same. They have limiters in multiple places which are there to trip us up. For your situation, a screenshot would help a lot to see what connections you're making. The usual trouble:

1. fluid launchers limit flow to 1800 whether they're used in the platform IO port or somewhere on a platform floor.

2. space pipes can hold 10800 paint in all 12 of its pipelines, but, can only deliver 1/6th of that to a full 12 platform IO ports because the fluid launchers limit each port to 1800. So, groups of 4 IO ports (launchers) make 7200; generally, each of the three levels with 4 ports makes 7200 for that level, which is enough for 16 painters, if using a regular pipe to deliver all the paint.

3. extractor pumps make 450 paint, so with 4 combined it's 1800 which matches a single output port's limit due to fluid launcher. and 1800 is 1/6th of what the space pipe can handle from each output port. So, it requires six full extractors (with 3 extensions) providing paint to all output ports to fill an entire space pipe's 12 pipelines with 10800 paint. And then, the platform IO limits the space pipe's ability to deliver paint to a platform. So, one full space pipe can fully supply (1800 per port, 7200 per level of 4 ports) four separate groups of 12 platform IO ports. That leaves each pipeline with 3600, which is half what's needed to fully supply a group of 12 platform IO ports. So, it can half supply 4 more groups, or, if you combine half with the other half, it'll be 6 pipelines of 7200, which can fully supply 2 groups. Complex.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2162800/discussions/0/4759829624071296497/#c4759829624073216020

(edited to correct 7200 per pipeline to 10800, and related stuff; thank you DeviantGamer)

[alisuu]

The Fluid tanks flow limit goes to both of it ports, so even if you pipe in 3600, only 1800 goes in, rest stays in the pipe. And since you also take 1800 out, it doesn't fill.

Also something to note on the paint mixers. They state two of them is needed for full fluid catcher but that's only the output. They work a bit differently on shape stackers that they only need half of that for the input since the paint amount combines. So If you have paint mixer platform that takes full 12 catchers of both colors, it outputs 24 full catchers of the result color.

[elidoran]

Originally posted by alisuu:

So If you have paint mixer platform that takes full 12 catchers of both colors, it outputs 24 full catchers of the result color.

Exactly right. Here's a mixer platform doing that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3319191085

[Nate]

The devs have admitted there is no limit on pipe throughput. Contrary to what the game says. You only have be concerned with the launcher limit.

[Kage Goomba]

Yeah I noticed the same but frankly all I see is the potential for pipe's to have more shoved through at some point in the future - but at this point its all down to the weakest link in the chain - so you craft your factory around your slowest producing building.

1800 per unit is the max per pipe launcher.
You can game it all you want - you still will hit that limit any time you leave a platform/enter a platform - or use the launcher on a platform to cross things.

So long as I'm running at 100% Efficiency - I don't care too much at that point.

[DeviantGamer]

Originally posted by elidoran:

Paint/pipes work differently than belts/shapes. I'll link below a comment I made in another discussion on paint.

Paint is different than shapes/belts. It's best to stop thinking of them as the same. They have limiters in multiple places which are there to trip us up. For your situation, a screenshot would help a lot to see what connections you're making. The usual trouble:

1. fluid launchers limit flow to 1800 whether they're used in the platform IO port or somewhere on a platform floor.

2. space pipes can hold 7200 paint in all 12 of its pipelines, but, can only deliver 1/4th of that to a full 12 platform IO ports because the fluid launchers limit each port to 1800. So, groups of 4 IO ports (launchers) make 7200; generally, each of the three levels with 4 ports makes 7200 for that level, which is enough for 16 painters, if using a regular pipe to deliver all the paint.

3. extractor pumps make 450 paint, so with 4 combined it's 1800 which matches a single output port's limit due to fluid launcher. and 1800 is 1/4th of what the space pipe can handle from each output port. So, it requires four full extractors (with 3 extensions) providing paint to all output ports to fill an entire space pipe's 12 pipelines with 7200 paint. And then, the platform IO limits the space pipe's ability to deliver paint to a platform. So, one full space pipe can supply four separate groups of 12 platform IO ports.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2162800/discussions/0/4759829624071296497/#c4759829624073216020

Looks like space pipes have a flow of 10.8K x 12. That would mean it can handle 129,600 L/m which would be about 6 I/O with the full 12 launchers each

[elidoran]

Originally posted by DeviantGamer:

Looks like space pipes have a flow of 10.8K x 12. That would mean it can handle 129,600 L/m which would be about 6 I/O with the full 12 launchers each

Thank you for pointing that out. I dunno if I have just remembered 12 x 7200 wrong or if it changed in 0.0.8. It's nice that it matches the train packages for paint, too (10800 liters per package).

[DeviantGamer]

Originally posted by elidoran:

Originally posted by DeviantGamer:

Looks like space pipes have a flow of 10.8K x 12. That would mean it can handle 129,600 L/m which would be about 6 I/O with the full 12 launchers each

Thank you for pointing that out. I dunno if I have just remembered 12 x 7200 wrong or if it changed in 0.0.8. It's nice that it matches the train packages for paint, too (10800 liters per package).

Not a problem, for the longest time I thought it was that way as well, then I was working on the Crystal Generator builds and realized I could run it on 3 full space-belts of shape so had to go back and redo all my math lol

[elidoran]

Well, thank you, again. I think we all dislike finding posts with incorrect numbers. Especially our *own* posts. I went and corrected another post I made recently which had the same mistake.

Having it be 10800 per pipeline also makes the platform IO even more interesting because it can fully supply four groups, and the leftover in the pipelines (after removing 7200) is 3600, which is only half of what's required to fully support a platform IO group. So, it's either half-supply 4 more IO groups, or, send the space pipe thru a combiner which puts half of it into the other half so it has 6 pipelines of 7200 to fully-supply 2 more IO groups. It even takes a lot of typing to explain it. Sheesh.

I also went into the game and looked at each of the other paint related things to ensure I remembered them all correctly. I swear it was 7200 in 0.0.7. Ugh.