Is the fluid system really worth it?

[Ryusko]

It seems like a waste to have so much cycle time and so much jank dedicated to trying to model fluid movement for... what? It looking kind of neat 'flowing' through the pipes? I would love this game so much more if the system was dramatically simplified, and just checked input rate output rate and height.

Here's the incredibly elaborate setup that is breaking the fluid system: I have 5 plastic refineries and 5 rubber factories which generate 150m3/minute of residual heavy oil. It needs to get to 3 refineries making residual fuel, which have a capacity of 180m3/minute of heavy oil. No matter what is done, some of the plastic and rubber factories back up because their fluid output gets full. Here's what I've done to try to fix it:

-Adding pumps to ensure headlift. These Refineries on the same level, but whatever, why not. Does not help.
-Adding a 'bump' over a wall, to make sure the fluid is higher at some point than the machines they're feeding. That's kind of neat, it's like a water tower. Does not help.
-Adding fluid buffers at a variety of points throughout the system. Does not help.
-Adding non return valves at a variety of points, with a variety of fluid throttling. Does not help.
-Moving the fuel refineries to a lower floor in the factory. Does not help.
-Making the pipes a loop instead of a line. Does not help.
-Priming the system first, so all of the pipes and all of the machines and all the buffers are 100% full first. Does not work.
-Just tear out all the pipes and build them again. Does not work.
-Waiting an hour for the whopping 13 machines on this elaborate straight line to manifold. Does not work.
-Underclocking the fuel refineries to use exactly 150/min. Does not work.
-Overclocking the plastic/rubber to produce exactly 180/min. Does not work.
-Removing refineries so the pipes are always full and at 'full' pressure. Does not work.
-Adding 10 more of each refinery to produce 300/min for a perfectly full pipe. Does not work.

Any or all of these do not stop the plastic/rubber machines from getting backed up, the fuel refineries being nearly empty, and the flow rate of the pipes between them average to 50m3/minute. Having to do any of this in the first place is a little bit tedious. Spending three hours trying combinations of all of them to simply move outputs for 10 machines over to 3 machines right next to them and it still failing is incredibly frustrating. Can't post screenshots because I'm playing from Epic, so discount me out of hand if you want, but running a single pipe between two basic recipes on a flat plain shouldn't warrant this level of troubleshooting anyway.

I understand that it's working fine for you. I understand that you're certain you have a trick that works. I understand that you're sure I just don't have enough headlift somewhere.

The fluid system is an overly designed failure of a vanity project.

[shoopy]

It's probably just a bug if everything is set up correctly (which doesn't take much)

I just slap pipes together and they work. I ignore pretty much all the "tricks" people say to do (like feeding down into machines)

I have 40 coal generators, 10 fuel burners, like 15 refineries and an aluminum plant. Everything has 100% efficiency just being slapdash put together ignoring all tricks. I have *one* inline pump in all of that because one set of refineries is high enough to need the lift.

[HotCoffeeDude]

I'm just tired of having to fix the system by deleting and rebuilding parts of it (junctions and wall/floor parts in particular), it seems to work fine for a while then just starts to bug out. Maybe if they just got the bugs out of it, the systems where I don't use those parts seem to work out, but they don't look as nice. If the system is so fiddly they couldn't get all the parts working for a 1.0 release then no. The answer to the OPs question is probably no. It sounds like they're still working on it.

[mansman]

There's 3 issues with the pipes right now that I have run into. Floor/wall holes are broken (again). Connections don't always get made correctly. You can see it happen sometimes when you're connection a pipe to an endpoint and you get the yellow overlapping glow even though there's nothing to overlap. This means the pipe is overlapping the endpoint and the connection will likely have issues. The sloshing is broken.

If you have a full pipe with consistent input and output, there shouldn't be any major swings in flow rate. The system should balance out to have even flow. This simply doesn't happen in 1.0 in some cases. I've had piping systems continue to cycle between 20 and 300 flow even when the pipe is full. And I have exactly the same system on the next block over that works flawlessly.

Again, once CSS knock out most of the crashes (which they put in a massive down payment on today) they'll be able to tackle these types of issues. We'll just all have to wrestle with fluids until then. There no magic trick to be had.

[ShelLuser]

Solved it! (most likely)

So... I rebuild the whole system and I'm pretty sure that I know what's up here. And for the record: my earlier assumptions about wrong amounts per minute were way off. But I had my coffee in the mean time ;)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337562270
As you can see I build 2 sets of 5 refineries where the left produces the plastic and the right rubber.

Here's a full overview of the backside of the setup:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337568548

I have to use a tower because I keep my creative game on-par with my actual game and I haven't unlocked the hoverpack yet (and I don't cheat (too much ;))).

I'm not sharing this to boast or in the sense of "pictures or it didn't happen", I'm also showing you this because you left out the most important part in your post: the way in which you build the circuit, what is your layout?

Could it be close to mine? This is key.

You see, the refineries which produce the plastic produce 10m3 residue / minute each, totalling up to 50. But the rubber section produces 20 m3 per minute which totals up to 100 m3/minute.

That's a lot more pressure!

And the thing with fluids is that it goes from high pressure to low pressure, so I think that your rubber section is pushing back on the plastic, resulting in a push flow -back.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337568579
^ That is my plastic section, you'll notice the pressure shown on the valve?

But now look at this, the rubber section:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337568613

That's twice as much pressure! Which is why you're seeing these two valves. If your system is like mine where you feed your 3 fuel refineries from 2 different sides (plastic & rubber) then this is also the cause of your problem.

The solution should be obvious: valves.

Originally posted by Ryusko:

The fluid system is an overly designed failure of a vanity project.

No, the problem is that you're messing with stuff you don't fully understand. And instead of trying to learn you prefer to shift the blame onto the system.

[Ryusko]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

That's twice as much pressure! Which is why you're seeing these two valves. If your system is like mine where you feed your 3 fuel refineries from 2 different sides (plastic & rubber) then this is also the cause of your problem.

The solution should be obvious: valves.

Originally posted by Ryusko:

The fluid system is an overly designed failure of a vanity project.

No, the problem is that you're messing with stuff you don't fully understand. And instead of trying to learn you prefer to shift the blame onto the system.

I think this is probably actually it, each plastic is directly across from a rubber. But the fact that this took three pages of replies with people each sharing their non-applicable folk remedies to get to one that probably might maybe solve the issue shows that this is an overly designed failure of a vanity project.

Also, having valves anywhere in the system still didn't help. After each refinery, after each pair, after the rubber and plastic but before the fuel, etc. So, no, valves still didn't solve it.

[Helen Carnate]

Trying to help but I cannot duplicate the issue.

I just plopped down the exact set up you described.
1 pure oil node overclocked to 300/m
5 plastic and 5 rubber taking in exactly 300/m of oil. (Edit. Saw previous posts after I posted this and swapped them around so the higher pressure were first in the output and 2nd and even swapped them out alternating them one at a time to mess things up and all had the same result of no issues) All hard products fed to a sink so the items cannot possibly back up. This produced exactly 150/m of heavy oil
The heavy oil fed to 3 residual fuel refineries making fuel burning 180m so it should never back up with the fuel produced being fed off to be burned. I had the 3 fuel generators at 200% so each were burning 40/m which was the exact amount being produced by the heavy oil refineries if they were at 100%.

0 valves, 0 pumps, 0 loops, just 1 line feeding each line and 1 line exiting each line.


Then clocked into work and checked on my first break. No back up after a couple hours. Pipes were staying steady. So I tried to force it to back up somewhere. I turned off the generators so that everything would back up with fluids. 10 min later the heavy fuel finally backed up and those refineries were full. Another 10 min and everything was totally filled with fluids and production on everything stopped. Exactly what I wanted. Then I turned on the power generators. It did take a while for the pipes to clear out enough room to get everything working again but after about 7 min all the machines were back up and running at full capacity.

Sorry but the problem isn't the pipes. It's you not doing something right.

[ShelLuser]

Originally posted by Ryusko:

But the fact that this took three pages of replies with people each sharing their non-applicable folk remedies to get to one that probably might maybe solve the issue shows that this is an overly designed failure of a vanity project.

I don't agree with that but I do see your point and it's a fair argument IMO!

Since you don't seem to post here often (yet? ;)) I do think it's fair to say many people feel the need to share their dislike for the pipes system and if you've seen that day in and day out.. well, some people get tired of it and some of those people don't know how to ignore. That's my 2 cents on that at least.

Originally posted by Ryusko:

Also, having valves anywhere in the system still didn't help.

Just placing valves isn't enough, you need to know where to place them. And in the right direction.

If your setup is like mine then you only need to make sure that the pressure from both areas (plastic/rubber) goes into the fuel section, but not backwards. So if you use a pipe 'splitter' to hook up both sections then 2 valves should be enough: one to prevent backflow on each section.

Of course if both sections (plastic/rubber) are connected to each other in one pipe and that section is then fed to the main one you probably only need 1 valve: one to make sure the overpressure of the rubber section doesn't flow back to plastic, but you'll still want both sections to "power" the fuel section.

Meh.... my mind made is made up... I'm gonna start a Steam guide covering Satisfactory logistics; including conveyors, pipes and packaging because why not ;)

Hope you can resolve your issues! (seriously!).

[Ryzilynt]

Originally posted by Ryusko:

Is the fluid system really worth it?

Yes.

[Lywelyn]

Originally posted by Shadow:

Had a similar issue with my aluminum factory earlier today. Pretty sure the issue is the recycled water sloshing in the pipe where it connects back into the main feed pipe. I had put a valve in to prevent that, but it was still backing up the line.

Moved the valve a bit so that at least one refinery was only getting recycled water and flushed the network. That seems to have taken care of things for now, but I still need to figure out how I want to set up some sort of failsafe to sink any excess water, just in case it gets backed up again.

fluids work when you know how they behave.

in your case for instance, i know it might sound stupid, but yet it can be the source of the issue, so try and failsafe it as such :

build your valve on your pipe, once set, disassemble both side of the pipe, do not touch the valve, instead, rebuild pipe starting from the valve connection port. it is sadly an issue some people have, not sure if it is affected because of mod or also influence vanilla games.

for every other issue i've read on the thread so far, buffer is the answer.

[king_of_jamaica]

For everything except Alumina, sure, pipes work just fine.

For some reason, trying to recycle the waste water in my Alumina setup is completely impossible. Sulfuric Acid for batteries? Recycling the waste water works flawlessly. Sulfuric Acid for nuclear fuel? Recycling the waste Sulfuric Acid works flawlessly.

Maybe it's just an issue with waste fluids produced by refineries, maybe it's something else. Either way, it made my first playthrough very unsatisfactory until I finally caved and just packaged and sunk the waste water.

Honestly though, if valves actually worked, there would be no issue with pipes whatsoever. The valves don't actually honor the flow rate you select. To test I added valves to my alumina setup to try and recycle the waste water. I'm using 780m of water, and producing 546m. Simple enough. Slap a valve on the waste line and set it to 546m and slap one on the extractor line and set it to 234m. The valve on the extractor line actually has a flow rate of 236.2m and the waste line valve actually has a flow rate of 548. So backup of waste is inevitable since the valves are letting more water through than they're supposed to.

Is that accurate to fluid dynamics? Probably. Does it make pipes and fluids a fun experience? Absolutely not.

[K]

Originally posted by king_of_jamaica:

For everything except Alumina, sure, pipes work just fine.

For some reason, trying to recycle the waste water in my Alumina setup is completely impossible. Sulfuric Acid for batteries? Recycling the waste water works flawlessly. Sulfuric Acid for nuclear fuel? Recycling the waste Sulfuric Acid works flawlessly.

Maybe it's just an issue with waste fluids produced by refineries, maybe it's something else. Either way, it made my first playthrough very unsatisfactory until I finally caved and just packaged and sunk the waste water.

Honestly though, if valves actually worked, there would be no issue with pipes whatsoever. The valves don't actually honor the flow rate you select. To test I added valves to my alumina setup to try and recycle the waste water. I'm using 780m of water, and producing 546m. Simple enough. Slap a valve on the waste line and set it to 546m and slap one on the extractor line and set it to 234m. The valve on the extractor line actually has a flow rate of 236.2m and the waste line valve actually has a flow rate of 548. So backup of waste is inevitable since the valves are letting more water through than they're supposed to.

Is that accurate to fluid dynamics? Probably. Does it make pipes and fluids a fun experience? Absolutely not.

My suggestion is to look up 'satisfactory VIP junction'.

Using something like it I can't recall ever having a problem with anything like alumina production when it comes to recycling fluids back into a system.

[Sinister]

You have to trouble shoot where the issue is, I know that might sound obvious, but that means going through the math again, and again, and maybe again. Checking every line in and out. One little mistake, especially early in the system will cause major issues. You can also put a fluid buffer inline between the output that is backing up and the next component which I have after residual, and after fuel refinement.

For comparison sake, my fuel plant is running 28 refineries of crude, I believe 24 of them are rubber, 4 are plastic. I then feed 10 refineries that make residual into fuel. That single output line feeds 20 fuel generators. This definitely took me troubleshooting to get to where it is now, but at this point it literally runs flawlessly, I am producing exactly what I need to power all 20 generators without backing up anywhere. It took me getting the math right for this to work though. To me part of the fun of this game is troubleshooting bottlenecks.

[shoopy]

Also make sure your solids are moving correctly.

I had my aluminum plant lock up because it is fed by a train station, and when train stations are doing the unloading animation they pause the outflow of items which leaves a gap in the belt, which caused my scrap foundry to stop for several seconds while the alumina foundry kept producing, which eventually caused a fluid lock after many hours of running.

I placed a container fed by my fastest belts to handle the outflow of the train station. The extra capacity of the belts closes the gap before it reaches the machines, so now the system doesn't lock up anymore.

[Lywelyn]

never had any issue here, be it alumina or else, while it require a perfect planing ahead if you want a perfect loop of constant production,

it's always safer to simply underclock your production

[Lawn-Mower]

Holy crap this thread's funny. Blind leading the blind.

Hint: Other than perhaps the occasional stray false connection, there are no bugs with pipes. People who claim otherwise simply don't understand the underlying mechanic.