Steam Engine Troubles

[Sir Cailean]

So for some time now guys, I've been having some issues with some of my steam engines. Not all of them, just some of them. I've played enough you'd figure such an easy to comprehend thing shouldn't be an issue, yet here I am.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/dymetreus/screenshot/89351480104679462

http://steamcommunity.com/id/dymetreus/screenshot/89351480104681724

It's night time, so no solar power. I don't have the things which store power, and as you'll notice, I can certainly use more power. All of the prerequisites are met, water, coal, boilers - but they aren't producing power. As you may have noticed in the right hand top corner, I have some perfectly working steam engines. (hence the smoke) They're at full available performance. I've even seperated them entirely to see if maybe there was something funny going on with it all connected. (which still wouldn't make much sense to me)

I've been fiddling around making a huge mess of things just trying to get them to work. When I destroy one for a second and put it back, it's available performance is like 20%, but lowers drastically until it hits 0%.

Can any of you make sense of this?

[Lakota]

The boilers don't look like they are connected properly, water should flow in from one side and out the other, but in the picture it looks like you only have 1 pipe connected to the boilers or rather the steam engine directly connected

In the the second picture the water temp is 15C which is not hot enough. (Its actually the temp it comes out of from the off shore pump).

Try placing your boilers/steam engines in a line from the off shore pump. 1 pump, 14 boilers then 10 steam engines. This is the optimal ratio. Do no split the pipe as water tends to favor one path over the other. (At least in previous builds it did)

[Fel]

(for screenshots, you really want to copy the url with http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/ and an id, it puts the image directly visible instead of a link, like bellow)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=898233503
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=898233730

First thing first, your boilers are on the end of the pipes, I can't see where the pump brings water to the boilers on their side.
Given the mini-map, I assume that the pump is up north, but your water is not going to heat up if the boilers are at the end of the like (you say it is heated up, but the screenshot shows 15°C, which means it's normal temperature, for those not used to celsius temperatures).

Anyway, how you want to set things ideally is 1 pump, feeding water to 14 boilers (in a row, don't ever branch it before the end of the boilers), feeding up to 10 steam generators (preferably in a row because it's easier to set up in a line, but doesn't matter much).

EDIT: well, I was too slow going back and forth on the screen shots to make sure I didn't miss something^^)

[whiter2501]

Like Fox said, you should have everything in a straight line, with as little or no pipes in there at all.

[Sir Cailean]

Originally posted by Lakota Fox:

The boilers don't look like they are connected properly, water should flow in from one side and out the other, but in the picture it looks like you only have 1 pipe connected to the boilers or rather the steam engine directly connected

In the the second picture the water temp is 15C which is not hot enough. (Its actually the temp it comes out of from the off shore pump).

Try placing your boilers/steam engines in a line from the off shore pump. 1 pump, 14 boilers then 10 steam engines. This is the optimal ratio. Do no split the pipe as water tends to favor one path over the other. (At least in previous builds it did)

Hrrrm, I see. As I figured it was something obvious, I hadn't considered the fact the game actually quite literally changed the temperature in the water. I figured how it worked all along was that it followed a few specific conditions. Boiler, water, and steam engine connected? Then it worked! That's incredibly simplistic, but honestly I've never dealt with a game like this before, this is a level of realism I honestly didn't expect.

So if I understand this correctly, it takes the water in, boils it, then the boiled water goes out to the other side, and the steam engine uses that now boiled water? I'm surprised my other steam engines are even running!

[Fel]

Originally posted by Nolrovos:

Hrrrm, I see. As I figured it was something obvious, I hadn't considered the fact the game actually quite literally changed the temperature in the water. I figured how it worked all along was that it followed a few specific conditions. Boiler, water, and steam engine connected? Then it worked! That's incredibly simplistic, but honestly I've never dealt with a game like this before, this is a level of realism I honestly didn't expect.

So if I understand this correctly, it takes the water in, boils it, then the boiled water goes out to the other side, and the steam engine uses that now boiled water? I'm surprised my other steam engines are even running!

Pretty much, it does teach you this in the tutorial/story maps, but there are quite a few things there so it's easy to not remember everything.

[Sir Cailean]

Originally posted by Fel:

Originally posted by Nolrovos:

Hrrrm, I see. As I figured it was something obvious, I hadn't considered the fact the game actually quite literally changed the temperature in the water. I figured how it worked all along was that it followed a few specific conditions. Boiler, water, and steam engine connected? Then it worked! That's incredibly simplistic, but honestly I've never dealt with a game like this before, this is a level of realism I honestly didn't expect.

So if I understand this correctly, it takes the water in, boils it, then the boiled water goes out to the other side, and the steam engine uses that now boiled water? I'm surprised my other steam engines are even running!

Pretty much, it does teach you this in the tutorial/story maps, but there are quite a few things there so it's easy to not remember everything.

Yeah, I did that quite some time ago, heh. I bought this game probably about a half a year ago or so, but only recently have I really gotten into the game. I thought I did recall, and since my steam engines worked I figured I understood them, until I tried building some other ones. Everyone here has helped a lot.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the assistance!

[AlexMBrennan]

I had a similar problem and fixed it by connecting them to a different part of the factory instead of all the engines pumping power into 1 line.

Power lines have infinite throughput i.e. you can literally run all of your power through a single small power pole if you feel like it; it was pure coincidence that whatever you did fixed your problems.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by whiter2501:

Like Fox said, you should have everything in a straight line, with as little or no pipes in there at all.

You can have as much piping as you want. You can even store the heated water. Water's temperature does not change over time or distance.

[impetus_maximus]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Originally posted by whiter2501:

Like Fox said, you should have everything in a straight line, with as little or no pipes in there at all.

You can have as much piping as you want. You can even store the heated water. Water's temperature does not change over time or distance.

true, but steam engines next to each other (shown above) should not be sharing pipes in parallel. it does strange things with flow and should be avoided in my opinion. straight line with underground, or bend if needed is fine. the only time i share pipes is for 3 offshores feeding two boiler lines for a 1.5 pump, 20 boiler, 15 steam ratio.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by impetus maximus:

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

You can have as much piping as you want. You can even store the heated water. Water's temperature does not change over time or distance.

true, but steam engines next to each other (shown above) should not be sharing pipes in parallel. it does strange things with flow and should be avoided in my opinion. straight line with underground, or bend if needed is fine. the only time i share pipes is for 3 offshores feeding two boiler lines for a 1.5 pump, 20 boiler, 15 steam ratio.

Yeah, this I agree with. I was commenting on the quote I had in my post.

[Cohlrox]

You can have as much piping as you want. You can even store the heated water. Water's temperature does not change over time or distance.

So actually, you should cut down on the amount of pipe that you have between any objects you connect including pumps, boilers, pump jacks, etc...

Pipe distance actually will effect liquid flow rate and the first fluid pressure drop off happens at 4 pipe length.

There is a nice thread at the factorio forums about this.

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=6066

[AlexMBrennan]

There is a nice thread at the factorio forums about this.

The 4 pipe limit is relevant if you want to squeeze 40 steam engines' worth of water through a single pipe for some reason.
If you use the normal 10 steam engines per boiler line then the limit (357 pipes) might as well be infinite.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by cohlrox:

You can have as much piping as you want. You can even store the heated water. Water's temperature does not change over time or distance.

So actually, you should cut down on the amount of pipe that you have between any objects you connect including pumps, boilers, pump jacks, etc...

Pipe distance actually will effect liquid flow rate and the first fluid pressure drop off happens at 4 pipe length.

There is a nice thread at the factorio forums about this.

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=6066

Yeah, so if you do happen to put your steam engines 300+ pipes away then distance DOES matter. You got me.

[obstructor]

Originally posted by Nolrovos:

So if I understand this correctly, it takes the water in, boils it, then the boiled water goes out to the other side, and the steam engine uses that now boiled water? I'm surprised my other steam engines are even running!

Don't worry we are equally shocked.