Water pressure

[Lothos]

Alright, I've dabbled, dipped,. seartched, youtubed...etc and I still need a bit more insight to the horror that is maintaining water pressure.

I can manage to maintain pressure over distance with the various pump layouts to boost/maintain inline pressure. So, no worries there about distance from water source.

What I am wondering perhaps is if liquids are treated sort of like the belts are in this game and maybe that is simply my problem. I had thought simply putting more offshore pumps at the head end and more inline booster arrays would increase the total volume I had to work with but alas I think I am working a single pipe simply too hard.

How much work can one expect a single offshore pump to provide? Does adding more offshore pumps to the same feeder pipe help any?

[HeLLfire]

I'm relatively new to Factorio, but as far as i understand it, pressure and fluid throughput is related to pipe length\amount - which can again be modified by electrical engine (pipe) but that's only useful at very long distances, and over short actually decreases it unless you use many of them.

Ref: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6066

[Warlord]

They lose pressure over long distances per segment. If you are losing pressure, try using underground pipes for most of it. Each long segment of underground pipe loses as much pressure as a single above-ground pipe. That can increase the distance by up to 10X.

If that doesn't help, consider taking things closer to the source. But unless you are carting liquids over long (1000+) segments, this shouldn't be an issue.

[Lothos]

first off, please re-read my OP. I KNOW how to get water over long distances.

[KatherineOfSky]

IIRC one offshore pump COMPLETELY fills a pipe, so adding additional offshore pumps will not make a difference -- you need a second pipeline to carry more water.

[Acarin]

Offshore pumps provide 60 water/second, small pumps push 30 fluid/second. The actual pressure in a pipe is not generally relevant, except insofar as you can see if you are using more than you are providing (ie the mean pressure drops over time, ignoring the spikes). However, if you stick to the ratios suggested on the forums (eg 1 pump provides enough water for 10 steam engines or 1 refinery block of 5 refineries + 8 cracking plants) then you shouldn't have any problems :-)

[Lothos]

completely fills regardless of the length? This is going to make a sick mess of pipes into the base sadly :( and I already hate my oil production layout atm.

[fractalgem]

Originally posted by lothos:

completely fills regardless of the length? This is going to make a sick mess of pipes into the base sadly :( and I already hate my oil production layout atm.

You really shouldn't need more than one pump for water used in oil refining and cracking unless you're making a megabase.

[Lothos]

I have at present, 750 beacons, 180 pumpjacks, 1500 electric mines, 1200 smelters, 600 assembler 3's, 250 chem plants, 55 refineries, etc etc etc.....

[fractalgem]

Originally posted by lothos:

I have at present, 750 beacons, 180 pumpjacks, 1500 electric mines, 1200 smelters, 600 assembler 3's, 250 chem plants, 55 refineries, etc etc etc.....

ok, yeah, that's enough to need more than one pipe.

I recomend playing around with a full blown fluid bus. Maybe get sqeak-through so that you can walk through your pipes for easy access.

[Lothos]

I think water has simply become the latest weak link in my layout. I have plenty of copper smelting, but I simply can't push enough plates through my base to meet all demands atm, which in turn is causing green circuit production to fall apart and so on. I think I need to seriously work on subnetworks.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by lothos:

first off, please re-read my OP. I KNOW how to get water over long distances.

Sorry, I wasn't paying too much attention after the whole "they are like belts, right?" comment. As far as I noticed, an offshore pump puts just enough water into a pipe as it can take. Well, maybe it can do a heck of a lot more, but since the pipe itself is the limit, it's down to that. Any more off-shore pumps at the head of a line, if it goes into a single width pipe, will not help you get more refineries/crackers down the line.

As you found out, simply refreshing the water pressure further down a line of pipes if the machines are consuming it is the solution. As Katherine stated, small pumps are actually a bottleneck if you implement them, but they aren't really needed for water.

[Acarin]

Distance does affect throughput of a pipe, but you have to send your pipe a loooong way before you notice. You can go 357 pipe sections before it drops below the flow rate of an offshore pump (and all you need to do then is connect in two small pumps in parallel and you are good for another 357 pipes). My pipelines rarely run more than 200 pipes in length, but this is another good reason to use underground pipe, as two lengths of underground pipe cover the same distance as 11 lengths of regular pipe, but only count 2 towards the 'pressure length'.

I hope that made sense, as it can be one of the harder things to get your head around in Factorio :-) Well, this and circuit networks. And trains. And oil ratios...

Sorry, returning to the original question: as far as I can tell, there is no way to push more fluid through a pipe, and the 'best' way is definitely to run 1 water pipe per refinery block into your base. Yes, this can become something of a maze of pipes as the base gets bigger and bigger, but that's simply one of the challenges to efficient layout of your oil processing facility :-)

[Lothos]

the sad thing is all this is making me do is further think about demolishing and moving my oil faciluty :D

I only ever have been using the 5 eletric pump booster layout on my water source pipes too. Whats sad though is although it says you should put them in farther down the line closer to that magic 357 mark it also says you have to put them in before the pressure drops as they cannot increase the pressure back from a low level. Hence why I have always had them on the head end.

My current setup has 10 offshore pumps feeding into 4 or 5 sets of 5 pump arrays before it splits into 2 lines. The one line has another 3-4 sets of the 5 pump array immediately after the split while the other has 1 or 2 halfway on to its destination. Now on the primary pipe leg it feeds about 25 refineries, 15 light chem plants, 8 heavy, and I think thats it even though it continues to where the other branch comes in from the opposite side after feed the concrete loop and a bunch of other minor stuff and the sulfuric side of the oil plant before connecting back with the first leg.

As of right now, this functions with near full levels for 75% of it and dropping to just under half to the rest. I do however like the separate oil plant i built late on far to the left in my base that solely produces petroleum gas with no byproducts. I will however look at its water supply though as it too has about 25 refineries and the according chem plants all fed from 3-4 offshore pumps and 5 pump arrays and yet it is 100% full.

[ShutEye_DK]

Originally posted by lothos:

the sad thing is all this is making me do is further think about demolishing and moving my oil faciluty :D ....

That's not sad. That's Factorio :)

[HeLLfire]

I was wondering, if you put a tank in the middle of the water line, would the pressure\throughput be reset so it counts as pipe 1 when you output it again from the tank?