I wish for fat pipes

[pat]

We all occasionally need to get a lot of liquid from here to there, but pipes can only carry so much. The only solution is to place a lot of parallel pipes. Seems to me that we could use some sort of high-throughput pipeline system.

[Fel]

Sadly bigger pipes don't transport more liquid (bob's mods used to have bigger pipes for the rarer materials but it didn't result in more liquid being transported so it was removed).

The only known way to high a high throughput is to use pumps, with less pipes between each pump you can transport a larger amount of liquid in a single pipe, up to 12,000 units per second if you only use pumps (and just a bit less if you alternate pumps and tanks).

There is a nice table about this on the wiki:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines

[pat]

I know these things. That's why I used the word "wish". I understand that it doesn't exist now, but I think it's not an unrealistic feature to hope for. Stringing hundreds of pumps end to end seems a bit ludicrous to me.

[GunRunner89X]

Exactly the reason I have at least 2 pipes of petroleum on the bus.

[Hammer Of Evil]

i have used fluid wagons and barrels to keep my flamethrower fuel deposits topped off, and haven't had a problem.

i wouldn't want to string long pipelines into hostile bug territory. one pipe destroyed means no more ammo =x

[pat]

I honestly don't understand the logic behind the current fluid system. If you've got a pump transferring liquid directly to another pump, you can have a theoretical throughput of 12000 u/sec. If you put one section of pipe between the pumps, this drops to 5400. Ok, I can understand that. Perhaps the inside diameter of the pipe is considerably smaller than the input/output openings on the pumps. But why does adding a second section of pipe now drop it to 3000? It should have the same inside diameter as the first pipe. Why is it slowing the fluid down THAT much? I can understand that there would be some very minor drop, but nearly half???

[Fel]

It would definitely be nice to be able to have a "main pipe" that doesn't need pumps everywhere to transport large amounts, there are various mods that tried it over the years (some with better results than others) but with the introduction of fluid wagons in vanilla it became fairly clear that the "high throughput" needs in vanilla would probably not be pipe-based.

But it's definitely annoying making a big build (looking at you nuclear power...) and needing 10+ lines of pipes.

[pat]

Originally posted by Fel:

(looking at you nuclear power...)

EXACTLY.

What actually prompted this thought was that as an experiment, I expanded my nuclear power into an area that wasn't near water. I figured that I could rail water in and have it delivered at various locations along my turbines. But even though I put a ton of rail power into it, I simply couldn't keep up with the demand and ultimately ran 20 pipes from far away with pumps every three underground links.

[THE kilroy]

Originally posted by pat:

Originally posted by Fel:

(looking at you nuclear power...)

EXACTLY.

What actually prompted this thought was that as an experiment, I expanded my nuclear power into an area that wasn't near water. I figured that I could rail water in and have it delivered at various locations along my turbines. But even though I put a ton of rail power into it, I simply couldn't keep up with the demand and ultimately ran 20 pipes from far away with pumps every three underground links.

Scaling requires rethinks. So 1 reactor is fine on an offshore pump, but once you start adding more, you have to adjust and use multiple pipes or maybe trains, and scale more you need to adjust again, i build my reactors on the water, cause ill string 20 of them together.

High flow could be nice, but for tge same reasons that double belt speed isnt desirable for gameplay, i dont think it will happen.

The fluid transfer rate of a pipe 1 tile wide is crazy high in terms of the real world.

[Fel]

Originally posted by pat:

I honestly don't understand the logic behind the current fluid system. If you've got a pump transferring liquid directly to another pump, you can have a theoretical throughput of 12000 u/sec. If you put one section of pipe between the pumps, this drops to 5400. Ok, I can understand that. Perhaps the inside diameter of the pipe is considerably smaller than the input/output openings on the pumps. But why does adding a second section of pipe now drop it to 3000? It should have the same inside diameter as the first pipe. Why is it slowing the fluid down THAT much? I can understand that there would be some very minor drop, but nearly half???

It's not so much about the pipe's diameter, it just seems like the game's pipes are not the "presurized pipes" concept that we are using these days in real life. where we can keep the liquid's pressure mostly constant for the whole length of the pipe.

In real life you can use a very small inner diameter and push a ridiculous amount of water through it (provided that the pipe is stong enough to handle the massive pressure), that's how we get the so called "water laser" or "water cutter" that are used to cut through steel and concrete.
On the other hand, bends become more and more problematic as the pressure rises, and past a certain pressure the liquid starts to heat up too much and becomes a gas (but that takes a lot more space so it tends to end very badly).


The game doesn't force you to handle all of the pressure things and mostly goes from the places that are more filled towards the places that are less filled, which does allow you to have half-filled pipes and such at the cost of losing pressure from the pumps at an incredible rate.

[pat]

Originally posted by THE kilroy:

High flow could be nice, but for tge same reasons that double belt speed isnt desirable for gameplay, i dont think it will happen.

I agree about the belt speed. For a while, I was using Bob's turbo and ultimate belts, but that felt a little cheaty, so I'm staying with blue now. But I think of the pipes a little like power poles. They give you starter poles to get you going, then you get the medium poles for most of your power distribution needs, and you also get big poles that are good for transferring electricity over distances, but they're not a good choice for local distribution.

If I were designing these fat pipes, it would require a few steps that would all require advanced research. If you're sucking from a water source, a large pump that would feed into the pipes. Otherwise, perhaps a unit that would accept several small pipes as a source and output to the big pipes. Maybe these big pipes would only be in long sections, like maybe 10 sectors each. Over long distances, perhaps a large pump.

[Fel]

I found this mod that seems to do the whole pressurized pipes if you want to give it a try:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/high-pressure-pipes

[pat]

Originally posted by Fel:

The game doesn't force you to handle all of the pressure things and mostly goes from the places that are more filled towards the places that are less filled, which does allow you to have half-filled pipes and such at the cost of losing pressure from the pumps at an incredible rate.

But there is pressure regardless. If you have a full storage tank and connect a pipe to an outlet at the bottom and open it, liquid is going to come gushing out. There is pressure created by gravity from the tank, plenty to completely fill the pipe. Then there is the pressure applied by the pump. Supposedly, you're going to get 5400 u/sec coming out of that pipe. Like I said, I don't understand why a second pipe is going to slow down the flow.

Size is an abstract concept in Factorio. A nuclear reactor and a circuit board are the same size when traveling on a belt. So how big is a pipe? And how much is a liquid "unit"? If you pumped 1 gallon of water per minute into a 5' diameter pipe, it's not going to be much of a gush. But since these pipes only transfer half the liquid that the pumps do, that says that a pump will keep a pipe filled to the brim with liquid, even if it was just emptying out onto the ground at the end of the pipe. That is, assuming that there is plenty of input at the pump's source.

With that in mind, it doesn't make any sense to me why, if you have this setup:
[offshore pump] -> [pump] -> [50 pipes] -> [storage tank]
Why is the last pipe before the storage tank not completely full?

As I said before, the pump transfers liquid faster than the pipe can accept. So how is that last pipe not full?

Like size, distance is an abstract concept in Factorio. If these pipes are 8" in diameter and a mile long, then maybe I can see it. But that means that assembly machines are 3 miles long and belts are a mile wide.

[Purpleganja]

My way of seeing it is that pipes are meant to carry 1200 fluid/s. Anything over that is just to leave building design room and to not have only pumps everywhere.

I also view tanks as pools lower than the ground with gravity pulling fluids to them and not the other way around.
It is not a perfect metaphor, but it fits better with the % sharing/equalizing mechanism of pipes and tanks.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by pat:

We all occasionally need to get a lot of liquid from here to there, but pipes can only carry so much. The only solution is to place a lot of parallel pipes. Seems to me that we could use some sort of high-throughput pipeline system.

Personally, if I wish to have a higher throughput than a normal pipe, I use a train. They're surprisingly high throughput and don't require bottling and unbottling like drums on a belt.

[BoogieMan]

That's what she said!


But in all seriousness, it would be cool if there was research for a higher throughput pipe later in the tech tree that was more expensive.