Head lift: does this still work?

[Grandaddypurple]

Say I have refineries at 150m altitude making turbofuel. For aesthetic purposes, I want them (the pipes) to go all the way down to -15m, then back up 70m in another building. These pipes won't need any pumps from -15 to 70 right? (At no point will they go higher than the initial 150m). I've read that in several places but I can't say for sure if it's been patched or not

[Mister Fabulous]

I'm assuming them and they refers to the pipes runningg from the refineries. The answer is yes, it will work. This isn't a bug, so there is nothing to patch, unless you're talking about the issue with calculating head lift below the Z plane which was fixed.

Head lift is measured from the last point lift is generated. That is either a refinery/extractor, or a pump. So if you put a pump at say Z=50, that resets your head lift after that point. It doesn't matter what the lift was before that pump, fluids after it can only rise to Z=70 now.

So you can go up to 160m if you wanted to before you need a pump. If you always stay below the height of the refinery, you dont need a pump anywhere along the way.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

So you can go up to 160m if you wanted to before you need a pump. If you always stay below the height of the refinery, you dont need a pump anywhere along the way.

Do you know what happens if you mix pipe sources in this case? I've read up on the wiki regarding head lift quirks, and it pointed out an interesting thing that happens when you connect multiple height sources like a water pump on a lake at a higher elevation. In that case, the combined head lift is based on the highest elevation source.

It doesn't tell me, though, whether that is true for anything else. Could I build a refinery high up on stilts, and hook it up to the dozen other refineries on the ground floor to provide them with the same head lift of the first?

[Mister Fabulous]

I haven't done that myself, but I assume the game will calculate head lift from the highest point in the entire network until another lift source is encountered based on TotalXclipse's video using water extractors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5PqXlY3CYY

I don't think fluids would behave different based on the source or type in this regard. I'd give it a go myself, but I'm supposed to be working now :P

[Grandaddypurple]

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

I'm assuming them and they refers to the pipes runningg from the refineries. The answer is yes, it will work. This isn't a bug, so there is nothing to patch, unless you're talking about the issue with calculating head lift below the Z plane which was fixed.

Head lift is measured from the last point lift is generated. That is either a refinery/extractor, or a pump. So if you put a pump at say Z=50, that resets your head lift after that point. It doesn't matter what the lift was before that pump, fluids after it can only rise to Z=70 now.

So you can go up to 160m if you wanted to before you need a pump. If you always stay below the height of the refinery, you dont need a pump anywhere along the way.

Thanks a lot! Edited the "them" thing for clarity.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

I haven't done that myself, but I assume the game will calculate head lift from the highest point in the entire network until another lift source is encountered based on TotalXclipse's video using water extractors: *SNIP*

I don't think fluids would behave different based on the source or type in this regard. I'd give it a go myself, but I'm supposed to be working now :P

Ok, so it seems any liquid source works for providing the head lift, but it must be actually attempting to provide its liquid to the network. So, it seems to me that you could bottle up some water, lift the bottled water way up high (200m or more), and unbottle it. The provided water SHOULD give head lift to the dozen or more water extractors at sea level, enough to provide them with lift up the the unbottler factory.

It sounds though that if the pumps at sea level shut off (because they are full), the pipes in front of them need to stay at full 300m/s water speed, which will then be provided by the water unbottler up top.

I wonder if you can use a non-in-line storage tank to provide a buffer for the sea level extractors. This could mean the sea-level tank would provide the water flow instantly if the sea-level pumps shut off...