trying to maintain fluid volume in pipes

[Silentguygaming]

Is there a way to keep a fluid pipe full when the pip is pushing fluids around? i seem to be losing some volume in any liquid when it has to travel long distances.

[fractalgem]

While tiny amounts of fluid will be lost due to rounding errors now and then, this amount is negligible under normal circumstances,e.g. you aren't going out of your way to deliberately increase the amount of fluid lost in some sort of terrifying "because I can" fluid voiding abomination.

If your pipe is a very very long one (iirc hundreds of segments; use underground pipes to reduce the number of segments per distance), you'll need a pump every now and then to keep the flow rate up.
Pipes have a maximum throughput rate as well.

[Silentguygaming]

ok I was thinking of after 15-20ish pipes i put a storage tank to pool it up then put a pump on the output

[Warlord]

Originally posted by Oldwargoat:

ok I was thinking of after 15-20ish pipes i put a storage tank to pool it up then put a pump on the output

A bit overkill. I think the amount lost over time would amount to 0.x liquid over an hours time of flow/use. People have been able to accurately determine the products resulting from processing hundreds of thousands units of oil.

Heck, even looking for info on fluid loss I am coming up empty. And this is a game in which people write up RESEARCH paper's worth of forum posts describing the fluid mechanics of the game.

[Hedning]

The pump is a great tool, it resets flow rate to 12000 units per second (that's the production of 10 offshore pumps). The flow rate drops sharply the first few pipes however. The water from one offshore pump can take a maximum of 17 segments before even it needs help with pumps. That is a good number to remember; 1200 units/s = max 17 pipe segments.

If you need below 1000/second there's practically no limit to how long the pipe can be and still handle it.

The storage tank cannot help flow*, it works much like a larger pipe piece.
*The one exception to this is if you need the max 12000 you can use tanks on the bends. A pipe on the bend would limit it to 6000.

If you intend to have a storage it is a good idea to put a pump on the input to keep up the flow rate. Otherwise if your storage is half full it will act to block flow.

[shadain597]

Not sure if the first post was clear enough on this, but it's not really that you are losing fluid, just that it's slowing down as it goes through more pipes. The reason underground pipes are good, aside from allowing you to walk past them, is that each piece counts the same as 1 regular piece of pipe, as far as fluid flow is concerned, but they can connect to each other at a distance. Whenever you'd use 3 or more normal pipe pieces in a line, you can minimize the lost flow rate by using underground segments instead. *

Underground pipes and pumps can definitely help, but if you are really trying to move a large volume over a long distance it might be time to consider setting up a train to move the fluid instead.

*edit: that particular example, of replacing 3 pipes with 2, would be considered "overkill" and unnecessary for many applications. So, you don't need to go all-in and use underground pipes for every little thing. Also, I forgot to point out another useful trait of the underground pipes: they only connect in 2 directions, 1 of which will only connect to another "matching" underground pipe. Compared to regular pipes, which automatically connect in all 4 directions, that can be very useful if you are trying to handle multiple fluid types in a confined space.

[fractalgem]

Originally posted by Oldwargoat:

ok I was thinking of after 15-20ish pipes i put a storage tank to pool it up then put a pump on the output

That is, as another has said, massive overkill. There's about only two situations where I'd seriously consider it that I know of

1. Massive water througput to a nuclear reactor on a danger ores scenario when dealing with limited water availability
2. insane modpacks like pyanadons or maybe angelbob. Pyanadon's red science is abouuuut as complicated as...vanilla purple science, or at least blue science. It only gets exponentially more complicated from there. Some products DO need pumped short distances in amounts pushing up against the pipe max throughput in those.
EVEN THEN, I don't think I actually used that kind of overkill design very often.

But in a vanilla, launch a rocket run? You should realllly never need to use those. a pump every 100 undergrounds should be MORE than enough for all your oil needs.