Need help with piping issue

[Dark Admiral]

Looking for help here as I cannot understand what is wrong.

So I have a setup of 14 Fuel Generators all of them using regular fuel (yellow). 2 of the generators are underclocked at 66% thus requiring 8m per minute and the other twelve requiring 12m per min for a total of 160m per min of fuel needed.
I have 3 refineries working full time producing 40 fuel each from Crude oil and another refinery producing an other 40 fuel per min using the residual fuel recipe, so all 4 refineries together producing 160m per min of fuel. I have a setup of 8 Fuel generators on a floor and the other 6 are on a floor above, exactly 8x4 meters walls above. I'm using a MK2 Pump so should be well enough according to my understanding. All my pipes are also MK2 so shouldn't be a bottleneck there either, even though MK1 would be well sufficient.

Now, my top 6 generators are never working full time, they are always missing fuel and I cannot find the cause. Any clue would be appreciated. Thanks fellow Factorians!

[Dark Admiral]

Originally posted by John The Man:

Not an expert, so take my advice with a pinch of salt.

Pipes in this game are not like conveyors. They do not abide by strict numbers, but by pressure and elevation. (Essentially.)
Conveyors don't have this problem because going up and down for them is the exact same as a flat plane. But pipes are weird. A flat pipe going to another flat one will almost immediately have liquid in both of them. But a flat pipe going to one that is inclined will have to fill up a lot more before the "water" level is high enough to reach the next pipe.

My advice is to one, produce more fuel than you need so the pipes fill up, and any inconsistencies won't drain them. And two, place a valve on the pipe that goes to all of the lower fuel generators. Set it to half closed.

The valve helps because it does not just put a hard cap on how much liquid can flow. It also requires more pressure for liquid to flow through it, meaning any other path will be filled up sooner, as it requires less pressure. It might also help to put a pump on the immediate part after the pipe inclines.

Hi John, thx for the reply and different tips. I know about the pipes vs belts, so I usually wait quite a while before getting suspicious..hehe. It usually is fine after a while, so all good. But not with my fuel generators.

I hate overproducing unless I can sink it, so this would be a last resort option.

I’ve never used a Valve!! Doh!! I will definitely give it a try, good info!

Thx again firend!

[Huren Ogeko]

There are issues with mk2 pipes especially if you run them over long distances. There are some things you can do to minimize issues- but I tend to just run 2x mk1 pipes when I have along way to go myself. Its almost as if the pipes eat some of the fluid in certain situations.
I have 8 water pipes in mk2 pipes for my bauxite production. Tow of my pipes keep needing the extractors to run one and off even though none of them are connected to machines yet, just large buffers.
I am hoping the update 8 engine will help mk2 pips but I have no reason to believe it will right now. I know the devs are looking into ways to improve the calculation performance of mk2 pipes.
The pipes as is are not bad...99% of the time if you keep the system simple they work flawless but its that 1% that drives me nuts sometimes.

[Dark Admiral]

Originally posted by Huren Ogeko:

There are issues with mk2 pipes especially if you run them over long distances. There are some things you can do to minimize issues- but I tend to just run 2x mk1 pipes when I have along way to go myself. Its almost as if the pipes eat some of the fluid in certain situations.
I have 8 water pipes in mk2 pipes for my bauxite production. Tow of my pipes keep needing the extractors to run one and off even though none of them are connected to machines yet, just large buffers.
I am hoping the update 8 engine will help mk2 pips but I have no reason to believe it will right now. I know the devs are looking into ways to improve the calculation performance of mk2 pipes.
The pipes as is are not bad...99% of the time if you keep the system simple they work flawless but its that 1% that drives me nuts sometimes.

Hmmm....that sounds like the issue I have so it would explain it all. Thx for letting me know. I'll go back to MK1 if I have no other choice.

Cheers!

[Sanquin]

I tend to overproduce stuff a tiny bit when I can. Like, if I need 300m2 of water I'll try to produce 301 instead. Though I get that that's harder with stuff like fuel, as you'll slowly overproduce that way. And having to remember to flush a bunch of buffers every X hours would suck.

[Philbo]

Are the running generators full? Where is the mk2 pump?

[Dark Admiral]

Originally posted by Philbo:

Are the running generators full? Where is the mk2 pump?

No they're not full, which is why it's causing me issues as they are turning on and off all the time, even some on the first floor. I have about half of the generators full. The MK2 pump is at the bottom of my vertical pipe bringing the fuel to the 2nd layer of generators

[Dark Admiral]

I'm gonna give it a try and move to Turbo Fuel. Should help anyways. Thoughts?

[GobboKirk]

Might be an elevation issue as well, could try to pump the oil above the top generators and let it drop back down again. Towers should eliminate any elevation differences.
Also keep in mind valves will reset headlift and depending on placement could cause issues.

[G0emi]

There is also a factor of how you divide up your pipes.
Because if yyour production = whats needed, then depending on the setup it can take ... maybe not hours, but a long time for the stuff to work at 100%

Following reason, hard to explain by words:

Say you have a line of Fuel Generators and the pipe with your fuel comes in at the very first Generator. You now split your pipe in half, 1 goes into the first Generator, the second one goes to the next Generator. At the second Generator you again split the pipe, one going for the Generator and one for the next, and so on ...

If I remember correctly pipe intersections work like splitters in that regard if you have 1 input and 2 outputs:
1 goes in, 0.5 goes right, 05. goes left.

What that means is, your first Generator gets 80 of your 160 fuel per minute and only 80 go to the next. There it splits again, 40 going into the second generator and 40 to the next ...
Bottom line is: the last Generators basically get nothing much. For them to get what they need to run at 100% every other Generator before the last one needs to be filled completely with fuel to the brim.

In the mentioned example, when the first Generator is full of fuel, it stops getting fuel from the pipe, therefor it doesn't take out 80/minute of your system but now only the 12 it needs to run at 100%. That means from the 160 you produce now suddenly 148 go towards the second Generator, who again, takes half of it until its storage is full ... and so on.

That is a "problem" for setups that are build to run as soon as they get their stuff, espacially Generators. (A line of Coal Generators could take a lot of time for the last one to work fully due to the coal-splitting and their 100 storage capacity)

If THAT is what causes your problems the sollution is easy: turn off your Generators or cut them from the power lines. That makes them take in their fuel until their storage is full. When every Generator is full of fuel, you can activate them / join them with your power network again, now, since every Generator only takes what it needs, it should work smoothly.

If thats not it, usually Pipe MK1 and double checking your Headlift (height differences of your pipe setup) and remember: not powered / not running fluid pumps will reset the Headlift at the point they are sitting, causing potential problems along the whole system.

[Dark Admiral]

Thx for the additional replies friends. I know about the way pipes splits the flow by half at every junction. But it was hours after and it still wasn't fully functional. Maybe I'm not patient enough??

I try to setup my pipes so that I have an input to the generators at the beginning, one at the end and one or more in between. That's in order to alleviate the 50/50 split on junction. I did that with my Coal Generators and it worked like a charm.

I've started rebuilding the whole system with Turbo Fuel and adding more generators as ratio is fantastic with turbo fuel. But I have a lot of work ahead of me in order to complete this small project, especially that I need to be careful not to shutdown my whole factory.

[Huren Ogeko]

In my setup I have buffers actually eating my fluids....there is nothing else connected but the buffer but yet my p umps keep having to run to replace the fluid going to the buffers. I am trying to work out what is causing this. It seems to occur with mk2 pipes and the more complex/lengthy the more the loss. I think its just a simulation error but I am trying to figure out what increases the affect.

Things like longer pipes more then one pump and using conveyor floor holes all seem to play a role in increasing the issue. Although a long horizontal pipe tends to be pretty stable unless you have alot of junctions.

The devs are working on a solution to make mk2 pips more reliable so hopefully things will get easier. For now I never count on 100% of a lone mk2 pipe/

[DownSouth05]

Aside from numerous inconsistencies in the actual items there are many unusual bugs that occur.

Recent examples: I set up a satellite production facility producing nothing but iron plate and rods. I had pure iron nodes with Mk 2 miners a total of 4 mines. Each mine was split off into three smelters and each smelter was feeding three constructors.

All wired and running, belts hooked up and the production was flowing nicely downstream to my main factory. A few days later I happened to notice that the incoming belts were all empty and the machines being fed by said belts were not running. I made a quick trip out to the production facility and all of the power lines to the miners had vanished. No power so no ore and no production. Note I play solo so no one got onto my server and took down the power lines.

I had two refineries feeding a storage tank, from the tank I split off two lines. Line 1 fed a power generator and I split off that line to feed a 2nd generator. Both generators were running, the pipes were full as well as the storage tank and the refineries were running. I had just completed running all the pipes "underground" and was admiring how clean it now it looked when generator #1 ground to a halt. Generator 2 was still running!

What happened? Only the devs can tell me. The fuel had to run through the line to #1 to get to #2, so if #2 was running, how could #1 have Zero fuel. I checked! The pipes were all full. I had to remove the pipe then install it again. It filled up and the generator that was starved for fuel started running again and hasn't stopped.

So, to the OP, rather than disassemble the whole thing I'd suggest flushing all the lines and let them refill.