Problems with water supply (piping)

[Swifty]

I am playing on the desert map (the yellow one) and have A LOT of problems with my piping network and I don't even know why, I originally had 3 pumps fully overclocked to pump out 300m³/m to satisfy the need of 3 fully overclocked coal generators, all tidy with the usage of the stackable pipe bases. But for no apparent reason it just stopped working half of the time with no explanation of why and no immediate idea of how. So I switched to 6 pumps with 3 of them overclocked a single time which equates to 300m³/m if you combine 1 normal and one OC, I even put fluid buffers at the beginning before it goes into the pipelines but for some reason some pipes are full, some are empty they keep switching like they want and entire power supply is F'd because of I don't know why. The Pipes rund across the desert to my main base, its a little but uphill and a little bit downhill but nothing too steep that should require extra pumps, not that I didn't try that, either i don't understand how they work or they just don't work.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2138612472

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2138612543

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2138612609

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2138612674

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2138612741

[Zara]

Alright, well Steam seems to be struggling with those pictures so we'll start with basic tech support questions (skipping, are the water pumps and coal generators plugged in)

1) Are you aware that any given pipe can only allow 300 m3/min to pass through? If you have all three of those pumps trying to shove 300 m3/min through, it isn't going to work.

2) Natural Headlift is 10m, and while I know you said you tried pumps and it didn't help...
2.1) Are the pumps facing the correct direction?
2.2) Are the pumps plugged in? (they require power)

3) It is my understanding that you don't actually want to overclock coal generators or water pumps (assuming you can help it, obviously some sources of water can't physically fit more pumps), because the generators scale almost linearly, so they take more resources, but then you have to spend more electricity to feed them. Water pumps on the other hand increase power consumption far more than the additional amount of resources they give you, so if you can build more, all the better.


In addition, even fully overclocked, each Coal Generator only needs 91 m3/min of water, so that 900 m3/water you're generating can almost fuel 10 coal generators running at 250%

[Swifty]

1) Yes
2.1) Yes
2.2) Yes
I placed the pumps at the beginning of the pipe segment that goes uphill
Screenshots should be visible now (they are not on the screenshots because i removed them again)

[Mana Burst]

Build your power generators by the water, easier to run power lines and conveyors than to pipe water, atleast that's my take on it.?

[Zara]

Dunno, based on the screenshots it looks fine. One last question: After inserting the Power Shards into the water pumps, did you actually move the slider at the bottom?

[Swifty]

Yeah I moved the slider to 180, guess I'll just add pumps to every uphill segmet until it works
Thanks for the answers my dudes.

[Mr. Bitches]

Make sure all the pumps are facing the right direction. I once accidentally put a pump pointing backwards in my line and spent a bunch of time confused why no water was making its way to the end

[Swifty]

Originally posted by GB #13, Alien Lizard 👽🦎:

Make sure all the pumps are facing the right direction. I once accidentally put a pump pointing backwards in my line and spent a bunch of time confused why no water was making its way to the end

Thanks for the heads up :D

[Mister Fabulous]

You need to look at your pumps. You are running them horizontaly, but you do say a little up, a little down. Assuming they're oriented correctly, see if the head lift on any of your pumps is over 22m. If so you need another pump down the line near that 22m vertical distance from the previous pump.

[Swifty]

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

You need to look at your pumps. You are running them horizontaly, but you do say a little up, a little down. Assuming they're oriented correctly, see if the head lift on any of your pumps is over 22m. If so you need another pump down the line near that 22m vertical distance from the previous pump.

How do I measure head lift?

[VuDjuBuh]

Originally posted by Swifty:

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

You need to look at your pumps. You are running them horizontaly, but you do say a little up, a little down. Assuming they're oriented correctly, see if the head lift on any of your pumps is over 22m. If so you need another pump down the line near that 22m vertical distance from the previous pump.

How do I measure head lift?

Head lift is shown in the pump itself

Edit: Just to avoid confusion. Yes you can open the pumps stats screen by pressing the interaction button on it.

[Mister Fabulous]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdxqFrOjjWU
This is a pretty good explanation of how head lift works. Better than anything I'm willing to take the time to type. Keep in mind, the vertical distance is what matters, not the horizontal.

[Swifty]

Originally posted by VuDjuBuh:

Originally posted by Swifty:

How do I measure head lift?

Head lift is shown in the pump itself

Edit: Just to avoid confusion. Yes you can open the pumps stats screen by pressing the interaction button on it.

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdxqFrOjjWU
This is a pretty good explanation of how head lift works. Better than anything I'm willing to take the time to type. Keep in mind, the vertical distance is what matters, not the horizontal.

thanks :)

[Bobucles]

Originally posted by Swifty:

How do I measure head lift?

Pumps reveal head lift in their stats.

Buffer tanks and ordinary pipes require head lift to fill up completely. One option is to build a staircase of pipes and just check them out. They'll only fill up to the maximum head lift, so the staircase will run dry at the limit. Another is to try filling a buffer tank. If the pressure is too low, the tank will never completely fill up.

[DrNewcenstein]

My first savegame is ruined because of the changes they've made to pipes since April (when I got the game). I've got a double-stacked pipeline running along the outer land bridge in Grass Fields around the right side of the Purple Forest from the oil in that region, and it was working fine until they started updating and changing how they work. I did not need pumps on the pipes in April, but in May, I had to add pumps to end-of-line segments.

Extractors are boosted 250%, and only have pumps to get up out of the pit they're in, and on inclines that I deemed "a bit steep".

All the pipes were full from the oil extractors all the way to the crater and nearly to the poison gas generators, then suddenly my pipes were empty and I could no longer feed the 6 refineries that had been getting plenty before (4 making fuel for fuel generators, 2 making rubber/plastic + residue which fed into 4 other refineries to make Turbo, Coke, and an Ouroburos of packaged and unpackaged fuel (packaged fuel feeds into the unpackager, which sends the empties and the fuel back to be used again).

After the Steam release, I've got pipes that are full on top of a hill, and the next segment is empty, and it's on a downward slope. I put a pump on the full pipe and NOTHING goes into the empty one. Yes, the pumps are on correctly, yes, they're powered. They're pumping away, with a headlift of maybe 10-15, but they are not draining to the next pipe, which shows, at most, 0.8m3.

Pipes are full-length, not shorties. I've deleted and rebuilt the empty pipes and their stackers, but still get nothing. I had 2 pumps on the full pipe - one at each end - and nothing.

Started a new game and moved that save to the Steam folder, and when I unlocked Oil again, I ran a line up a fairly steep and steady incline made of ramps (the middle-height one), straight to the bass near the crater & pond where my coal generators are, and, so far, I can feed the 6 refineries there from 2 pipes. I have pumps on the lowest point of every pipe segment once the incline starts, all the way to the base, even on the flat spots.

Back to my first save, I still have full pipes in one segment and empty pipes in the very next segment. My inline pumps are running off Geothermal, and they're making pumping sounds and showing movement and they're lit up. Their status screens do not say they do not have power, but they will not transfer to the next pipe.
Further down the line, closer to the refineries, I have more full pipes followed by empty pipes.
I have my pipes on stackers, so both pipes are at the same angle, but the one on top is empty while the bottom one is full in one section, while the top one is full and the bottom one is empty in the next section.

Yes, the pipes are connected to the stackers. They're not hanging off the end by a hair, they're connected.

The pipes that feed directly into the refineries are showing full, but the refinery is showing empty, which means they're not putting out fuel to the power generators, which have all shut down, along with plastic, rubber, and packaged fuel production. These refineries are also powered by Geothermal and Coal, and my 10 reactors are also part of the power grid.
I have over 54,000 MW of power but my oil/fuel network is dead, and no explanation other than changes that did not need to be made. We did not need "moar realizmz" on pipelines, they worked just fine.

[Lil Puppy]

From the screenshots I can see that you're overloading your pipes by a massive amount.
Each pump puts out 120, each pipe can handle 300 so 2.5 pumps max out a single pipe. Additionally I can also see that the headlift on the pumps just past your water tanks is too high.
10m is 2 large foundations and 1 middle sized foundation high. That is MAX height, you don't want to go that high thinking that water will actually pass through the pipes, it wont, it'll trickle through them at that height. Water weighs a lot, pushing it uphill has been a struggle since ancient times and requires way more power than expected to do it.

If you don't have to overclock the extractors, DON'T, they consume huge amounts of power that scales with the amount of water requested and headlift to the nearest extra pump. Use pumps instead, they're less energy intensive and work better and have better headlift.

"Head" is the amount of water/liquid in a pipe that can be reasonably moved by a source uphill. In the case of downhill, "head" is the amount of water in a pipe going downhill as it has its own force to it(mass and gravity stuff) - that should technically form a siphon from an extractor in many cases, but it isn't in the game so it doesn't. We also can't make ram pumps - which just require really strong piping and the siphon effect.

Anyway, 3 pumps can fulfill the needs of 8 coal generators if configured properly.

Pump 1 fills the first four generators, pump 3 fills the last four generators, and pump 2 splits off in the center (between generator 4 & 5 - the two sections) with pipe pumps going in opposite directions from the inlet pipe to the two other sections.
https://satisfactory.gamepedia.com/Water_Extractor
There's a diagram near the bottom that shows how to hook up 3 extractors to 8 generators

Also, make sure that your pumps are actually running, I hooked up my system and constantly had a lack of water and one of the pumps never started working, I had to unhook it from the pipe network and the power network and rehook it up to get it working... But it all works now.