Any plans for upgraded flow rate pipes?

[Honorable_D]

I understand that they probably don't want one, single pipe for each type of fluid but the 300 limit is well, pretty limiting. Would love a pipe that can support and overclocked oil extractor on a pure node. :D

[Suzaku]

There will probably be a mk2 pipe at some point, but nobody knows when.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

https://satisfactory.gamepedia.com/Pipeline_Mk.2

Just a suggestion here but you may want to consider reading the official wiki sometimes. Lots of useful info about the game in there.

[Honorable_D]

Oh shoot. 600 is defs less restrictive. I wonder what issues going from 300 to 600 introduced that they had to make the change.

[Mio Rin]

300 cubic meters per minute is 2.7 million barrels per day.
We're already breaking reality by thrumming that much through one pipe...
For comparison, the Keystone pipeline in Canada can handle up to 100 m3 per minute.

[Sono]

Scaling seems to be a recurring afterthought in this game. Weird, considering most of the game is about production scaling.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Mio Rin:

For comparison, the Keystone pipeline in Canada can handle up to 100 m3 per minute.

We're using technology so far in the future that it's created by a company that can send engineers to remote planets and drop-ship stuff from orbit via an orbital delivery platform on an alien planet. I'm sure they figured out how to get 300 m3/min to flow through a pipe without it bursting.

[Lil Puppy]

Well it's obviously a math problem since they reduced it 50%. Since everything is just numbers and there's no actual water flow in it being simulated, the rest of the system has to be tweaked to support the higher flow rate.

Each pipe section has a monitor which means that each section is doing the math, there's the pump, the tanks, and then the end purpose and the all do similar calculations. However, the one that breaks the system is the head calculation - the height the water can be pumped. If they use this calculation at the top and bottom then there are HUGE numbers being thrown around for that kind of water flow.

Flowrate of 600m3
Vertical lift of 20m
Requires a total pump head of 510.27m at 725.7psi through a pipe that is only 12 inches/30.48cm diameter (calculator I used was limited to this diameter as max).

That is a massive amount of pressure for a pipe to handle.

The pipes in the game are about a meter in diameter or 3+ times the diameter above so that's a cubic exponent on the other numbers. In other words, it makes things explode violently.

The pump would require 3.3MW power to move 600m3/m up 20 meters.

All of those numbers would be huge and not practical in any way to design for, but the big problem would be if you wanted the water to be pumped from a cliff to the bottom, the pressure at the bottom would be exponentially higher than the pipes would be capable of handling and they'd simply disintegrate or destroy whatever machine they were connected to if they didn't just burst the connections off.

So considering they did all this kind of math just to show you some simple numbers, I can only assume that at some point in development they're planning to add catastrophes to the game - too much head, pipes burst, need to redo your design to accommodate for all of it. Too much lift = more power, and if the pump can't handle it, BOOM! broken pump. Etc. They'll have to make different diameter pipes and strength requirements if they choose to do this.

[Honorable_D]

I can't imagine them getting that involved with pipes to stimulate PSI and bursting points. Perhaps it was just a performance issue going from 300 to 600 calculations.

I feel we have enough things to think and plan for without them adding bursting pipe and overloaded conveyor problems! Haha

[Sono]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

I can't imagine them getting that involved with pipes to stimulate PSI and bursting points.

This was done in minecraft with nuclear reactors and other machines, I don't think it added anything to the game, at all.

Talking about realism in this game universe while you materialize objects and buildings with a quantum pocket and hand computer... Just doesn't really seem fitting. I mean... The material you would need to create a space elevator would by mind numbingly strong. But, we have one of those too. Not a stretch to say the pipes are made out of what ever wonderous material the space elevator is, that comes flying out of your pocket dimension to build it.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Lil Puppy:

Requires a total pump head of 510.27m at 725.7psi through a pipe that is only 12 inches/30.48cm diameter (calculator I used was limited to this diameter as max).

That is a massive amount of pressure for a pipe to handle.

The pipes in the game are about a meter in diameter or 3+ times the diameter above so that's a cubic exponent on the other numbers. In other words, it makes things explode violently.

The pump would require 3.3MW power to move 600m3/m up 20 meters.

Bravo for looking up real-world pumps. Note that the in-game power usage for the Water Pump is up to 4 MW, so they did the math as well.

I'd love to have some kind of power storage...and hydro-accumulators would be kinda neat.