Deeply Confused About Pipe System

[Khimaera]

I've been playing this a lot. I don't know what changed from early access that didn't quite grab me to this but I'm enjoying spending time building spaghetti factories because of the continual need to expand as the game progresses. Style and pretty can come later.

However... I've spent a ridiculous amount of time struggling with the pipe/pump/valve systems. I'm not a fluid physicist or anything but if I'm putting out 60m3 into a closed pipe system I should not wind up with 5m3 trickling through at the far end unless there has been a major industrial accident. That's just not right.

I had set the blender to the 18m3 I need but then I got nothing out the far end but that is how it *should* function. Producing X should yield X not Y. If I need a pump along the way for a little bit of rise in the system... sure but several and OCing to triple what I need just to get anything through is wrong.

It's far too finicky and the ebb and flow also makes no sense. I imagine, perhaps wrongly, that reliable industrial systems are designed to work at a specific speed not to ebb and flow fluid through them or it would be a nightmare. And it is... Please FICSIT and/or maybe someone can explain to me how this is supposed to work please?

[Bainen]

Pipes are indeed difficult, I played over 600 hours in EA and have about 200ish hours on my new playthrough for 1.0. I never could get fluids to work right in EA. This guide (link below) may help you answer the flow question - I'm in the midst of laying out an 80 fuel generator plant running off a maxed out pure oil node, though I've yet plumb the refineries or flow any liquids, I fully expect I'll hit some challenges despite reading through this guide. Be sure to work on your project in stages using tanks if needed to hold fluids to simulate machines using them.

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/images/3/39/Pipeline_Manual.pdf

[Lawn-Mower]

The mechanic is far simpler than real world fluid dynamics.

[kimba-rip]

pipes and flow rates are a pain, but once mastered work lovely....

[shoopy]

Pipes have volume. If you dump a small amount of fluid into a massive pipe it's going to spread out in the pipe so that it trickles out the end. The fluid doesn't go anywhere so if you keep filling it, it will equalize so that the input does equal the output.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Lawn-Mower:

The mechanic is far simpler than real world fluid dynamics.

So is building an entire factory. It's not exactly helpful.

OP, you won't get much more than generic advice without any screenshots of the builds that are causing problems.
I have *finally* got a 108GW rocket fuel plant up and running, and the fluid/gas side of it is running like clockwork, despite there probably being kilometres worth of pipe, including x2 600m³ water pipes that run about 200m vertically upwards before splitting off to feed 6x Blenders each. I was majorly concerned they'd give me grief, but its all working perfectly.

There will almost certainly be something core to your builds that is causing problems, but without screenshots, nobody will be able to tell you what. If you're getting almost nothing out of the end though, my money is on a headlift issue.

[Vanyel]

Compared to everything else in the game - the piping system is by far the most most complicated system in the game and what should be relatively intuitive is far from it.

About the only other real-world aspect that continues to apply is gravity, and even then it only affects the player (and fluids) - other wise items would speed up on a downhill conveyor and we'd need motors to push things uphill. (not really complaining that last bit - would get frustrating if we had to add motors to conveyors not to mention additional electrical load to them as well as the conveyor lifts)

[Bobucles]

Single pipes are very simple. They will flow anywhere until the pipe reaches above the "head lift", which is a global altitude limit for that pipe. Head lift has a bit of randomness and will slosh up and down a few meters. Don't build higher than that.

Splitting pipes, flow rates, pipe priority? That's very difficult.

[K'senia]

A quick simple hack is just pump it up to a buffer higher than wherever you might finally need it. Then all your pipes downhill will always be full. There's a reason you see water towers above a town or onto of skyscrapers.

[Bobucles]

Water towers are a very good way of showing headlift. In fact they also reset headlift to the tower's level, so you don't want them in the middle of a pipe system. That'll mess things up very quickly.

[Knightframe]

You can make it very simple. Ignore m3 and just look at raw numbers.

Is pipe going into straight line with no ups or downs? Then it will never get stuck.
Do you produce 450 oil, but your pipe can only handle 300? Split the pipe system till your max is 300 in pipe and 150 goes into other pipe. DO NOT CONNECT THOSE 2 pipes.

Is your pipe going over the hill --- use the pump. Anything as high as 9m will get fluid stuck (you can check height by using 1m foundations stacked on each other).

Are you making a system when you wana recycle water? Be sure you put a limiter on the outgoing pipe to prevent flow from other direction and underpower the produced of fluid.
So for example machine need 300, but machine after it creates 150 fluid, you set main producting machine to 150. It will take some time to start up, but it will work fine later.

Also --- use fluid storage for input and output. If something gets stuck you can just flush it.

Other thing you gota be carefull with pipes. When you use pump and there is another pipe on same line, the fluid will get pushed back. Game shows you how far pump goes. But you can also use a pump to speed up fluids.

[Khimaera]

Thank you for the advice but I'm afraid I'm still stuck. Please see screenshot below. I built the nuclear power layout from here: https://www.satisfactorytips.com/layouts/no-nuclear-waste-nuclear-layout and triple checked to make sure I had all the valves, values, and everything else set for the closed sulfuric acid loop. It failed so I removed all the valves.

1) The left blender in the screenshot is idle at full output sulfuric acid capacity.
2) The center and right are functioning all right.
3) The pipe beneath my feet in the screenshot had a wildly fluctuating flow rate 0 - 100 and 24-25 m3 in pipe.
4) The next pipe in the line shows 0-20 flow rate and ~5 m3 in the pipe. How is that possible?
5) The blender at the end of the pipe needs 18 sulfuric acid per minute and is going idle because it is not getting it.
6) That is the end of the pipe. I removed a section that created the loop to try to find out what's happening and troubleshoot so the blender *should* be running at full capacity and all pipes full from the 3 blender output in the screenshot but it's not.

Can someone kindly explain how the three blenders pumping out a cumulative 24 m3 sulfuric acid are not filling the blender on the other end of that pipe to overflowing when it only requires 18?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3343899111

[Knightframe]

Originally posted by Khimaera:

Thank you for the advice but I'm afraid I'm still stuck. Please see screenshot below. I built the nuclear power layout from here: https://www.satisfactorytips.com/layouts/no-nuclear-waste-nuclear-layout and triple checked to make sure I had all the valves, values, and everything else set for the closed sulfuric acid loop. It failed so I removed all the valves.

1) The left blender in the screenshot is idle at full output sulfuric acid capacity.
2) The center and right are functioning all right.
3) The pipe beneath my feet in the screenshot had a wildly fluctuating flow rate 0 - 100 and 24-25 m3 in pipe.
4) The next pipe in the line shows 0-20 flow rate and ~5 m3 in the pipe. How is that possible?
5) The blender at the end of the pipe needs 18 sulfuric acid per minute and is going idle because it is not getting it.
6) That is the end of the pipe. I removed a section that created the loop to try to find out what's happening and troubleshoot so the blender *should* be running at full capacity and all pipes full from the 3 blender output in the screenshot but it's not.

Can someone kindly explain how the three blenders pumping out a cumulative 24 m3 sulfuric acid are not filling the blender on the other end of that pipe to overflowing when it only requires 18?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3343899111

Oh that is simple. Put fluid buffer where sulfur acid exit is. The pipes dont have enogh space to hold all the acid.

If you use Non-Fissile Uranium you can sometimes forget to remove water as end product -- wich i would recomend to just use to make wet cement.

However i see in this build a pipe that just keeps going away from base with acid and this could cause a issue as it going away from machine.

So to fix this:
Place fluid buffer at exit for 3x Encased Uranium Cell production so this acid gets stored.
Then where the split is to machine that takes acid and goes away i recomend you place another fluid buffer and put limiter on acid exit. Try to turn it 0.1 more than you need. So something like 5.99m3.

Another issue could be that your nuclear waste belts are to slow and you make acid slower than a machine uses.

[Zak]

Yes indeed, use buffer thanks and let them fill up first, before making further pipe connections. Pipes themselves don't have the capacity to hold much fluid. "Flow rate" is not the same as "amount of fluid".

Fluid tanks must be the most ignored and underused feature in this game and probably this is the #1 reason why people have issues with fluids and pipes.

[Omega420]

Mk.2 pipes have always been weird partially because they allow back flow. However a few simple tricks can fix most flow issues as long as your numbers are correct....

This is from the 108K MW Rocket fuel power planet I made in what is a perfect spot for the resources needed....

Oil input is raised since pipes always try filling the lowest point first.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344044624


The heavy residue output is pumped to a elevated buffer, along with the water input, this forces the buffer to always try filling the lower pipe to the machines and helps keep the flow going one way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344044693

The rocket fuel out is again pumped to an elevated buffer so it force feeds downward.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344044791

Even tho a 600 pipe should feed 60 overclocked generators, I found that at least two of the three lines would have 1-3 machines at the end stalling from lack of fuel....

I put valves on all three pipes 3 machines up from the end and then as you can see I connected the ends. If for whatever reason, the pipes want to think they have more then they should, it overflows to one of the lines that for whatever reason thinks it doesn't have enough...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344044962

The end result is that is works as it should...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344050486

[Evilsod]

I assume that's the impure oil well below the swamp?
I'm not sure how much difference vertical feeding or high ground buffers makes for rocket fuel, since the gas doesn't care about headlift or elevation.
I got around those issues by sending out 12 pipes instead of merging them.

It's definitely important for liquid components though.

I took a slightly different approach for my build there ^^
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3344064668

This is also why I need 50-55k steel beams/silica...