Oil Barrel Efficiency

[Yoda Nobunaga]

At what distance from the home base is it faster and more iron efficient to ship oil barrels instead of making a pipeline?

Like, to be iron efficient you'd need one barrel to move more oil faster than five pipes. A pipeline five pipes long will obviously outperform the barrels but, if I recall, the longer and wider your pipe the slower the fluid, no? Even with pumps.

And even if barrels are steel-heavy, if you have a train of barrels at the oil field(s) and an empty one at home it should be easy to exchange them and move a mountain more oil at once, no?



I ask again, is there a point at which the oil is so far from the factory that it's better to use barrels instead of pipes?

[Chindraba]

Rather than use barrels, use trains.

However, at any distance, if you place pumps often enough, the distance doesn't matter, the flow will continue evenly. The cost in raw resources for a pipeline will be less than the belts to carry the barrels. And if you are using trains elsewhere, they beat barrels. One fluid wagon holds the equivalent of 500 barrels, or 62-1/2 belt segments of barrels.

[Fel]

Perhaps, but a train with a few fluid wagons is so much better at transporting large amounts of fluids over distances that barrels pretty much never become the better option.

The only places where barrels are useful are when you need small quantities of a liquid in a distant place.

[GreenBeanN1]

If you play with mods:
I use this mod to deliver flamethrower fuel (in barrels and ammo) to distant locations.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Long_Range_Delivery_Drones

Easy to set up and if the frontline moves to another location it is easy wrapped up. Empty barrels are sent back to the main base for refil.

The mod is not only useful but it is fun too.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

Rather than use barrels, use trains.

However, at any distance, if you place pumps often enough, the distance doesn't matter, the flow will continue evenly. The cost in raw resources for a pipeline will be less than the belts to carry the barrels. And if you are using trains elsewhere, they beat barrels. One fluid wagon holds the equivalent of 500 barrels, or 62-1/2 belt segments of barrels.

When I say ship barrels, I was talking about by a train.

[Jagdtiger]

A train with fluid wagons is much better at transporting liquid than a train with cargo wagons filled with barrels. A wagon full of barrels or a fluid wagon full of fluid have the same capacity, but a fluid wagon can be loaded and unloaded MUCH quicker, and doesnt require barrelling infrastructure on either side. As far as when to use trains over pipelines, Generally speaking, just use trains. Pipelines lose flow capacity quickly unless pumped every few undergrounds, which gets annoying to manage, and bulky if you need to increase throughput. If you're moving fluid more than a couple screens, use a train with fluid wagons

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by Jagdtiger:

A train with fluid wagons is much better at transporting liquid than a train with cargo wagons filled with barrels. A wagon full of barrels or a fluid wagon full of fluid have the same capacity, but a fluid wagon can be loaded and unloaded MUCH quicker, and doesnt require barrelling infrastructure on either side. As far as when to use trains over pipelines, Generally speaking, just use trains. Pipelines lose flow capacity quickly unless pumped every few undergrounds, which gets annoying to manage, and bulky if you need to increase throughput. If you're moving fluid more than a couple screens, use a train with fluid wagons

I realized the fluid wagon part shortly after asking.

I suppose then the answer to "When are barrels better than pipes" would be "At the same time fluid wagons are better than pipes" or something.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Jagdtiger:

A train with fluid wagons is much better at transporting liquid than a train with cargo wagons filled with barrels. A wagon full of barrels or a fluid wagon full of fluid have the same capacity, but a fluid wagon can be loaded and unloaded MUCH quicker, and doesnt require barrelling infrastructure on either side. As far as when to use trains over pipelines, Generally speaking, just use trains. Pipelines lose flow capacity quickly unless pumped every few undergrounds, which gets annoying to manage, and bulky if you need to increase throughput. If you're moving fluid more than a couple screens, use a train with fluid wagons

That has been adjusted, v 0.16.8 Cargo wagon of barrels hauls 20K fluid. Fluid wagon hauls 25K fluid.

Lowered barrel fluid capacity from 250 to 50. (So cargo wagon with barrels holds 20k and logistic robots are not too strong alternative to carrying fluids.)

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

I suppose then the answer to "When are barrels better than pipes" would be "At the same time fluid wagons are better than pipes" or something.

Actually, I think the answer is more like when you only need a little bit infrequently and a pipe is too much trouble. Though, with my limited experience, I cannot think of when that might be. I've heard that barrels were before they had fluid wagons, and they were kept because some used them and WUBE didn't want to break old bases by removing content without needing to.

The only time where barrels are "useful" is with bots. They cannot carry fluids, but they can carry barrels.

[knighttemplar1960]

The only thing I use barrels for is to transport enough heavy oil to jump start a coal liquefaction plant. Those go in my inventory along with an assembler and I unbarrel them directly into one of the refineries. After that the coal liquefaction plant becomes self sustaining and I can reuse the barrels to jump start another coal liquefaction plant (or convert them into cliff explosives if I need some).

[SiEgE]

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

...

There is always one giant issue about pipes - damn biters eat through them, regardless to all the attempts to make pipes mostly underground.
A train with a fluid wagon is everything you need. Just put 1-2 of them and make them course around to deliver all the fluid.
Barrels were added to the game strictly because it was either an outdated feature that was practically replaced by the fluid system with pipes, or was added so you can manipulate fluids with transport belts.

Since when "g0d damn" is a bad enough word that it worth censoring!?

[Hedning]

Barrels is only useful for bots and to carry the liquid in your inventory.
I've already seen jumpstarting coal liquefaction, but you could also use it for your wall.
I have not done that yet, but those ugly pipes that crosses the map and rounds lakes to connect different sections of wall have always annoyed me, so I was going to try barrels in my new save.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Barrels is only useful for bots and to carry the liquid in your inventory.
I've already seen jumpstarting coal liquefaction, but you could also use it for your wall.
I have not done that yet, but those ugly pipes that crosses the map and rounds lakes to connect different sections of wall have always annoyed me, so I was going to try barrels in my new save.

I have. For walls it's much better to have an assembler offload oil or something because if you have long pipelines they surprise you and get in the way of your blueprints.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

Originally posted by Hedning:

Barrels is only useful for bots and to carry the liquid in your inventory.
I've already seen jumpstarting coal liquefaction, but you could also use it for your wall.
I have not done that yet, but those ugly pipes that crosses the map and rounds lakes to connect different sections of wall have always annoyed me, so I was going to try barrels in my new save.

I have. For walls it's much better to have an assembler offload oil or something because if you have long pipelines they surprise you and get in the way of your blueprints.

I still use rail cars for that. A chain of 100 flamethrowers uses a little less than 1/2 a storage tank of oil to fill initially and each second that one fires it uses 3 oil. You can use a fluid wagon for oil and a cargo wagon for ammo, repair packs, replacement walls, and replacement construction robots and just drop them off at a supply station near where you need them and you don't have to worry about long chains of belts or pipes. You only need belt and pipe lengths sufficient to supply a block of turrets.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

I have. For walls it's much better to have an assembler offload oil or something because if you have long pipelines they surprise you and get in the way of your blueprints.

I still use rail cars for that. A chain of 100 flamethrowers uses a little less than 1/2 a storage tank of oil to fill initially and each second that one fires it uses 3 oil. You can use a fluid wagon for oil and a cargo wagon for ammo, repair packs, replacement walls, and replacement construction robots and just drop them off at a supply station near where you need them and you don't have to worry about long chains of belts or pipes. You only need belt and pipe lengths sufficient to supply a block of turrets.

My base has full roboport coverage so I just let the robots deal with it for me.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You can use a fluid wagon for oil

I would consider that a half-measure. As it is 1 of my supply stations can supply several sections of wall since roboports crosses small sections of lake easily. Also you are suggesting 2 wagons instead of 1, so that's a bigger station and slower train.

Nothing wrong with that if you want to do that, but I'm going to try the barrels.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Yeah, use fluid wagons instead. Shipping oil barrels is something people used to do before fluid wagons were added to the game. It's an obsolete game-play mechanic now.

The single use case I can think of for shipping barrels is kick starting a coal liquification outpost with a small quantity of heavy oil. But even that's easier with a fluid wagon and a circuit to limit how much it gets filled with.