Oil problems

[Klab]

I have 2 pure oil nodes, with a mk2 miner on each. 2 x 240 which supports 4 rubber and 4 plastic refineries. So far so good, works perfectly with 3 coke factories to make use of the solution.
After a while I needed more plastic, so I boosted one oil extractor to 200%, built the big oil storage and upgraded the pipes and let it fill up. I built 8 more refineries (exactly the same as my first 8) to accomodate my new oil supply.
However here is where the problems start, no matter what I do the oil slowly drains away to nothing, causing a full production stoppage - obviously bad right. So in a panic I turn off the new refineries and all is ok again.
Why won't a 200% oil extractor support double the refineries?

[CursedPanther]

Have you also upgraded the pipes to Mk2 to accommodate the higher liquid flow rate? I'm guessing you've developed a bottleneck somewhere in your pipe network.

[Wasur]

No such thing as a Mk 2 oil extractor and miners dont go on oil nodes. Also I would suggest clearing the pipes instead of stopping the refineries. There does seem to be some lingering issues with the pipes the devs are aware of this and are trying to fix to the best of my knowledge.

[Oddball]

I've only been playing a few dozen hours, and just got through my learning curve of oil refineries, packing/unpacking and the associated buildings with running oil. I realized a few things that may help (or you may already know):

1) Refineries produce two outputs, if either one of them bottlenecks, it will reduce and cut off the refinery's output completely (heavy oil residue is was my bane for plastic and rubber until I researched the fuel generator to burn the extra fuel I made from heavy oil residue left over from choke coal)

2) I was unpacking everything from oil barrels to avoid piping it from 2500m away. However packing requires containers, and unpacking barrels creates them. So logically I started to create containers where the oil was being produced from plastic, to pack them, then sent a return belt of containers back to oil location to be used for packing again. This worked great until my entire belt was full of empty containers. (yes 2500m of belt is alot of containers!)

Point is, If you don't have room for your unpackers to create that empty container, then it won't exit the unpacker, and it'll jam up your entire oil automatically process start to finish. (Solution was to remove the original container constructor at the oil location, then create a holding container at the unpack location, and gradually weed/toss out stacks of empty containers until it reached a stable equilibrium point. This created enough space in the return line and timing with the source packing too allow the entire supply chain to start moving/flowing again)

3) Fluid flow (which is a rate, volume over time) in pipes isn't the same as material sitting on belt. I actually really appreciate the game for this realism. If you have X amount of stuff in your pipes but your flow is zero, then something is stopping it flowing from point A to B... a bottleneck. (Again, for my heavy oil residue problem, at first I wasn't able to convert it fast enough despite having fluid holding tanks....)

It was frustrating to figure it all out, but I got it behaving correctly finally....

Hope it helps, happy building!

[Wasur]

good post oddball and looks correct to me, I will add that the awesome sink is your friend for stuff that you have too much of plus you earn tickets, providing you have unlocked it.

[Klab]

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Have you also upgraded the pipes to Mk2 to accommodate the higher liquid flow rate? I'm guessing you've developed a bottleneck somewhere in your pipe network.

This was my thought too, checked the line and it seems ok tho.

Originally posted by Wasur:

No such thing as a Mk 2 oil extractor and miners dont go on oil nodes. Also I would suggest clearing the pipes instead of stopping the refineries. There does seem to be some lingering issues with the pipes the devs are aware of this and are trying to fix to the best of my knowledge.

Yes thx for the corrections, I posted at 2am and was tired - apologies

Originally posted by Oddball:

I've only been playing a few dozen hours, and just got through my learning curve of oil refineries, packing/unpacking and the associated buildings with running oil. I realized a few things that may help (or you may already know):

1) Refineries produce two outputs, if either one of them bottlenecks, it will reduce and cut off the refinery's output completely (heavy oil residue is was my bane for plastic and rubber until I researched the fuel generator to burn the extra fuel I made from heavy oil residue left over from choke coal)

2) I was unpacking everything from oil barrels to avoid piping it from 2500m away. However packing requires containers, and unpacking barrels creates them. So logically I started to create containers where the oil was being produced from plastic, to pack them, then sent a return belt of containers back to oil location to be used for packing again. This worked great until my entire belt was full of empty containers. (yes 2500m of belt is alot of containers!)

Point is, If you don't have room for your unpackers to create that empty container, then it won't exit the unpacker, and it'll jam up your entire oil automatically process start to finish. (Solution was to remove the original container constructor at the oil location, then create a holding container at the unpack location, and gradually weed/toss out stacks of empty containers until it reached a stable equilibrium point. This created enough space in the return line and timing with the source packing too allow the entire supply chain to start moving/flowing again)

3) Fluid flow (which is a rate, volume over time) in pipes isn't the same as material sitting on belt. I actually really appreciate the game for this realism. If you have X amount of stuff in your pipes but your flow is zero, then something is stopping it flowing from point A to B... a bottleneck. (Again, for my heavy oil residue problem, at first I wasn't able to convert it fast enough despite having fluid holding tanks....)

It was frustrating to figure it all out, but I got it behaving correctly finally....

Hope it helps, happy building!

Hadn't thought of this :)

[Wasur]

Originally posted by Wasur:

No such thing as a Mk 2 oil extractor and miners dont go on oil nodes. Also I would suggest clearing the pipes instead of stopping the refineries. There does seem to be some lingering issues with the pipes the devs are aware of this and are trying to fix to the best of my knowledge.

Yes thx for the corrections, I posted at 2am and was tired - apologies

LOL No worries! Just don't get frustrated and quit. Did you get it sorted out? Let me tell you what I did cause liquids were the bane of my existence when I started, It sounds boring nut I watched a lot of youtube vids and gleaned what I needed from them. Keep in mind there are some issues with fluids and the Devs had said so and said they are working on them. Hers a vid to start you off with that helped me to grasp the concept of headlift: Enjoy and have fun, oh and Merry Ficsmas! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ExdbBGt7ig

[Maehlice]

Originally posted by Klab:

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Have you also upgraded the pipes to Mk2 to accommodate the higher liquid flow rate? I'm guessing you've developed a bottleneck somewhere in your pipe network.

This was my thought too, checked the line and it seems ok tho.

Do the two lines of crude oil merge at all? If each plant is completely separate, then my guess is headlift.

[Klab]

The 2 lines are separate, one for fuel the other for plastic and rubber. It's weird, sometimes the storage is 3/4 full , when I check later it's nearly empty. The line is pretty flat, just 3 pumps covers over 1000 meters, sometimes it works ok, next minute it's a problem again.
I checked my numbers and the refineries input and the extractor output match perfectly. Guess I expect too much ....
And thx for the link Wasur :)

[Obz3hL33t]

I concur with the opinion that your flow rate is likely bottlenecked by a Mk1 pipe somewhere. However, head lift might also be the problem, and faulty pipes are always possible if you add and delete too many fittings, so when in doubt rebuild, especially if the pipe segment shows graphical artifacts and anomalies. If there's a little gap in a pipe segment that's a sure sign of trouble.

On head lift it's a problem I've grappled with often enough. Your pumps have a head lift gauge showing the height of the pumped segment. If it's more than halfway into the red it needs to be addressed, most likely by a pump added downstream at the END of the current pump's maximum. Ideally you want to place your new pump so that the gauge on the first just barely touches the red.

If your pipe run is mostly flat the proper distances between pumps might well be huge: horizontal flow doesn't require additional pumps regardless of distance.

That covers head lift downstream of a pump. As you can see it's pretty simple. But the more common problem is also harder to diagnose: insufficient lift INTO the pump. Those water-level production buildings only have 10m of lift, and if you exceed that even by a little it can spell big problems -- the hard-to-diagnose kind.

If the head lift INTO the pump is insufficient that's visible only as the secondary effect of the pump sometimes catching and sometimes slipping. The flow rate will shoot up to the maximum, hold for seconds to minutes, then slide down to zero, wobble at zero for a while, then after minutes to hours(!) shoot back up again.

This is also what the flow rate can sometimes look like when the pipe is operational and under heavy intermittent load, so this diagnostic is only valid if you already know the downstream pipe isn't working. Empty pipe downstream + wobbly flow rate gauge on the pump is a sure sign the INPUT, not the output, is exceeding maximum height.

Hope this helps.

[Klab]

Originally posted by Obz3hL33t:

I concur with the opinion that your flow rate is likely bottlenecked by a Mk1 pipe somewhere. However, head lift might also be the problem, and faulty pipes are always possible if you add and delete too many fittings, so when in doubt rebuild, especially if the pipe segment shows graphical artifacts and anomalies. If there's a little gap in a pipe segment that's a sure sign of trouble.

On head lift it's a problem I've grappled with often enough. Your pumps have a head lift gauge showing the height of the pumped segment. If it's more than halfway into the red it needs to be addressed, most likely by a pump added downstream at the END of the current pump's maximum. Ideally you want to place your new pump so that the gauge on the first just barely touches the red.

If your pipe run is mostly flat the proper distances between pumps might well be huge: horizontal flow doesn't require additional pumps regardless of distance.

That covers head lift downstream of a pump. As you can see it's pretty simple. But the more common problem is also harder to diagnose: insufficient lift INTO the pump. Those water-level production buildings only have 10m of lift, and if you exceed that even by a little it can spell big problems -- the hard-to-diagnose kind.

If the head lift INTO the pump is insufficient that's visible only as the secondary effect of the pump sometimes catching and sometimes slipping. The flow rate will shoot up to the maximum, hold for seconds to minutes, then slide down to zero, wobble at zero for a while, then after minutes to hours(!) shoot back up again.

This is also what the flow rate can sometimes look like when the pipe is operational and under heavy intermittent load, so this diagnostic is only valid if you already know the downstream pipe isn't working. Empty pipe downstream + wobbly flow rate gauge on the pump is a sure sign the INPUT, not the output, is exceeding maximum height.

Hope this helps.

Very thorough thank you! I will go over my pipelines again with these points in mind.

[Obz3hL33t]

I should also share the "Newton Smart Splitter" trick: if you want fluids to go to a particular building first, say for instance fuel to a packager before it's distributed among the fuel burners, build the feed pipe with the outlet lower than the inlet. Packagers have their inlet pipe set 2 meters above standard, so 3 meters or more of drop does the trick. That plus proximity to a source will guarantee prioritized flow.

[Vectorspace]

How much fluid are you trying to send down one pipe? It hasn't been explicitly stated, but a mk1 pipe can transport at most 300m3 per minute. If you try and push more than that down it won't work and machines will starve

[Maehlice]

Originally posted by Klab:

The line is pretty flat, just 3 pumps covers over 1000 meters, sometimes it works ok, next minute it's a problem again.

On the note of headlift, this kind of sentence comes up often when players don't understand headlift and the purpose of pumps.

Pumps have nothing to do with horizontal travel. A single extractor can push oil across the entire map without any pumps if the elevation is correct.

With that in mind, "3 pumps over 1000m" is moot. If pumps and horizontal travel distance are related in your mind, then there may be a disconnect/misunderstanding.

(Sorry if I'm reading too much between the lines here.)

Verify how much the elevation changes vertically and then add pumps accordingly.

The YT link @Wasur gave is exactly the build I was going to recommend. If you overcome the elevation changes with the proper headlift right at the source, you can run pipes across the countryside exactly like you would belts. No pumps. No power. Just pipes.