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This:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3364741226
This is my Oil Refinery train station. 36 pumps, split into 4 groups of 9. That's 3 "loading groups" and one "unloading group" where the pumps are flipped the other way. Each is connected to a separate "bus" of pipes, which hard-lines into a separate tank. The three loading pump groups turn on when they detect a negative value of a specific resource of Petroleum/Light Oil/Heavy Oil from the Cybercyn combinator, indicating a train wants to load that resource. The one unloading pump group triggers when it detects a positive value of Crude Oil, indicating a train wants to unload that. As long as I send in trains with only a single request (load or unload), only one set of pumps should be active at a time.
This is what I DIDN'T want to do, because it's using 36 pumps instead of 9. However, I couldn't really do it any other way without either losing throughput or bloating pump stages. Pumping between pipe networks is slow and ugly. I want to do as little of that as possible. This may be a lot of pumps, but they all pump direct from tank to train with no intermediaries.
This is the blueprint, if anyone cares to give it a test-drive. It relies on Project Cybersyn, though, as that's how the train station knows what the train wants to load. It also uses K2 Storage Tanks, but those can easily be replaced with regular tank stacks, as long as they're all wired together.
As I mentioned upthread, that doesn't work. You can purge the pipes, but you can't purge the pumps. If a pump's loaded, say, Crude Oil onto a train once, it'll be left with 400 units of oil in its fluid box. The only way to purge that is out the pump's output, which means pumping it into a fluid car. If the train that just parked is looking for something else - say Petroleum - it'll end up with 1200 Crude Oil in the tanks, stalling the entire process.
The only way to pump fluid out of a tank that's actively being filled by 3 pumps is to disable some or all of them conditionally, but that's a multi-step process. Purge the loading pumps into the rail car, disable them so that purge pumps can empty the train, then disable those purge pumps and enable the loading pumps again. I'm not sure what the logic for that would even be. I can't read the fluid level inside the pumps' tanks so I don't know when they're empty. I don't even know if I can read train inventory, to try and figure something out with that.
I tried doing that every which way I could think of, and I just couldn't come up with a good way to purge the loading pumps. In fact, I don't know of a way to do that even manually. If I accidentally let the "wrong" fluid into a pump while still setting up circuit logic, I have to remove the pump wholesale and replace it, then redo the circuit connection. Unlike fluid systems, there's no "purge" button. Would be nice if I could trigger that by signal...
Well, there may be one way to get down to only 9 pumps. You'll need to automate your construction bots: they'll need to deconstruct the 9 pumps and the pipes leading into the pumps, and have it automatically stamp down the correct fluid-type blueprint that reconstructs the pumps (and pipes) hard-connected to the new/correct source tank.
Example: the 9 pumps and pipes are hardwired to load up Heavy oil. When that train leaves, bots need to deconstruct the 9 pumps and pipes and then stamp down other blueprint for Light Oil (example) that the next train requires: redeploying the 9 pumps and hard-connected pipes to your light oil tanks.
This might require mods (maybe "recursive blueprints?" mod). Definitely out of my scope of knowledge on how to automate deconstruction and blueprint stamping for the bots.
Outside of that idea: I think the 36 pumps you have is the best you can do with the requirements you stated (9 pumps of throughput for each of 4 fluid types).
You know the amount that can go into a wagon, so you could in theory prepare exactly the right amount so no leftover would be left.
If you can't get it "just right", in cases like this it is better to go for slightly less than to "clog" a pump.
If the "source tank" always contains less than what the wagons can hold, then you can guarantee that the pumps will be completely dry with a smidge of room left in the wagons (wagons will get to 99% full, never 100% -- guaranteeing the pipes and inlet pumps are completely dry).
The question is how much throughput is needed to fill the middle "source tank" (that feeds the wagons). If you want the full 9 pumps of throughput for each fluid type going into the middle "source tank" (that feeds the wagons), then you'll need 9 pumps at each of the specific fluid tanks, plus the 9 on the train wagons (at 45 pumps now which is more than the 36 he currently has).
Is the goal to only have 9 pumps total in the entire system, or just limit it to 9 pumps at the wagons themselves?
Hooking 3 pumps for each set of 2 storage tanks might look a bit weird but it's not all that hard since the pipe length is no longer a real factor for throughput.
The main issue would be that if you are not working with constantly full pipes leading to the train, you would not get the full throughput for loading the train.
So for that, separate "channels" would definitely work better, allowing full throughput for up to 4 different fluids.
The whole idea of a station handling different liquids like here (and not one per wagon) at full throughput is already about digging into several rabbit holes anyway.
My answer was not about having less pumps but about the "can't purge pumps" issue that was mentionned.
Don't forget to account for the amount of liquid in the pipes leading into the middle/common storage tank -- those pipes need to be fully drained as well when loading the train (that middle tank and the pipes leading into it are all part of the same pipe segment).
That's only 6 pumps total of throughput, not the 9 he wants...
True. You only get max (infinite) throughput from pipes when they are 100% full. And with this common/shared middle 2 storage tanks design, you'll never get the absolute max throughput because that middle layer is never 100% full.
Not sure what you mean here. His original 36 pump design? That is the best design for throughput (each fluid always has 9 pumps of throughput).
Totally agree, the entire exercise is academic. The normal/easy solution is to just have 4 railway stops, one for each fluid type. Still 36 pumps, but only 9 at each railway stop.
You misread, or I didn't explain well enough.
it's 2 tanks per wagons, and 3 pumps on that set to match the 3 pumps filling the train.
If you want 3 wagons, then it's 6 tanks and 9 pumps.
The setup he showed in the screenshot at the start of page 2, yes.
If I was to design a station like that, I would probably want something capable of handling "any number" of fluids, with a setup where I can just copy only a small portion to add new liquids to the mix.
That or abandoning the idea of using the full 3 pumps per wagons, because being able to use only 2 means that the 12 pumps per wagon allow for 6 different fluids, going down to 1 allows for 12 different fluids (more than we need to handle in the base game but with mods it can still be "too few).
It's a bit like many over-engineered designs that we see or come up with ourselves, they are rarely a good answer to the problem at hand but they can be fun to make anyway.
The station should have just enough tanks to fill or empty a train. These tanks are normally kept empty. They have two-directional pumps connecting them to dedicated storage for each fluid you're shipping.
To unload a train, first you need to check that the permanent fluid storage has enough empty capacity to take in the full train load. Then you activate the station, train comes in and unloads to the intermediate storage tanks. They pump out to the permanent storage and shut down when the unloading tanks are empty.
To load the train, again you need to check that you have a train load available in your permanent fluid storage. Then you activate the pumps to move it into the loading tanks, and shut the pumps off once a train load is detected in the tanks. But there's an extra step here in that once the train departs, you need to pump any remaining fluid back out.
There's no need to worry about different pumps connecting to the wagons doing different things.
I've seen a system similar to this work with thrusters on a space platform.
There is, though. Like I said - pumps hold on to the last fluid they've pumped, and there's no way to purge them. None that I know of, anyway. Effectively, a pump is "tainted" by whatever it pumped last and I don't know of a good way to fix that. I tried building that. I pumped Crude Oil. Next train showed up and got a bit of oil in every tanker car before the pumps primed themselves with Light Oil - by which point they couldn't pump because the tanks already had crude in them.
I can purge pipes and tanks. I don't know of a way to purge pumps, short of removing and replacing them manually.
Your test case failed because the pump put the last dregs of what it was pumping previously into the fluid wagon, right? So the solution is to have a dummy train come by and prep the station for the next fluid. (When the previous liquid's dregs pump into the wagons, the same thing that caused your problem will keep the dummy wagons from being filled up with the new liquid.) Can you purge liquid wagons? If not, you might even need to have a dummy train for each type of liquid.
I suppose the best way to do it would be to purge the pipes immediately after a (real) train leaves, then send in the dummy.
Thanks :) It was the only thing I could think of to get around purging the pumps. I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realise that I can have more pumps side-by-side and just toggle them on and off in series.
This design actually works for a mixed fluid/cargo station, as well. Admittedly, I'm using Loaders (those got native train support in 2.0) so I don't need THAT many of them. By replacing the 9 unloading pumps with 9 loaders, I can do Coal Liquefaction. Three fluids out (Petroleum, Light Oil, Heavy Oil) and one solid in (Coal). It's a bit larger, but it still works.
That's not really an option when using logistics train systems (Cybercyn, LTN if it ever gets updated) since those don't have that kind of capability. Even with manual scheduling, though, the train system is not reliable enough to ensure that the purge train arrives before the load train. Trains path dynamically, so it's entirely possible for the purge train to get trapped in slow traffic while the load train paths around.
I'm a fan of something Adam Savage once said: "If you can't make it perfect, make it adjustable". This approach relies on perfection, as it's not fail-safe. If trains arrive out of order, they get stuck and I have to unstick them manually. As train order is not something I can control very precisely (without inducing significant delays), I feel this approach is unreliable. Not a bad idea, though.
1. Create a small loop for the dummy to travel on with a stop as close as possible to the liquid station exit. (For the test, I gave two non-dummy test trains a different short loop with a stop to make sure they'd use that track.)
2. Give the liquid stop exit track a rail signal and give the regular track coming up to the junction a chain signal that is farther from the juncture than the dummy stop.
(3. For the test, I gave the non-dummy trains two stops with one condition each: wait 30 seconds at the test station, and wait 1 second at the loop station.)
4. String circuit wire (I used red) between the rail signal going into the liquid stop and the dummy train stop.
5. Give the dummy train two stops with one condition each: wait long enough to purge the tanks at the liquid stop, and wait for the circuit (set to "Rail Signal" to equal "Green signal" (NOT Red, and I don't understand why the circuit apparently sends Red when the signal is green and Green when the signal is red, I just know that this is what made the system work in my test)
I am playing vanilla so unless those mods make a vanilla function nonfunctional then this should be possible for all players.
The result is that the dummy train goes to the station only, always, and immediately upon discovering that there is another train at the station. If there are more trains waiting behind the one loading/unloading at the station, the dummy train still beats each of them to the station as long as none of them finish their business before the dummy train can even finish its loop. Which is literally a few seconds, depending on the loop.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3365965882
P.S. On rereading your post, I realized that the above did not necessarily address your concern that the dummy train might get caught in traffic, potentially letting another train beat it to the station. This would not happen if the dummy uses a dedicated loop that begins and ends right after/before the liquid station; no other train should ever have reason to be on that loop and if the loop doesn't cross any other track it can't get postponed in that way either.
P.P.S. As I noted above, I'm a novice at circuitry, but while I was trying to figure out the basics I read an offhand remark about circuits that override rail signals (e.g. turning them red via circuitry when they would otherwise be green). It seems very likely that someone better at it than me could rig it up so that the liquid exit is closed off until the dummy train has reset itself at its stop. That seems redundant to me considering how fast it reset in testing, but this would allow for a longer reset loop or just peace of mind.
edit: fixed picture link
Purge train can be double sided to make it simpler.
I wonder how much throughput we just lost to having a purge train lol