Help: Ballast Tank Pumps

[Microsoft Excel]

So im currently building a Multi-Role Cutter. i am trying to work with 3 ballast tanks, 2 of them are for an Anti-List(Anti-Roll) system, and one is a ballast to offset the loss of buoyancy when my (far Fore Submersible bay is open. i must not fully understand the fluid flow system, because i can't seem to make them work.

currently, each tanks fluid system looks like this:
Exterior Fluid Port > Valve > Interior Fluid Port.

and for the Exfill
Interior Fluid Port>Pump> Exterior Fluid Port.

is there something im missing when it comes to how the fluid system works? how does pressure play in to it?

[GrumpyOldMan]

What's your issue exactly?

To easily flood a ballast tank you can build small custom doors on the bottom part of the hull,
2 doors with 2x9 blocks each fill up my subs ballast tanks at a rate of ~6k l/s.

If you lack the space for doors or want to use pumps, small pumps will do for flooding a tank, just make sure the input fluid port is as low as you can place it, and put the tanks interior fluid port as high as possible inside the tank, otherwise the pump would have to fight the fluid buildup inside the tank. You can notice this when the tanks filling up, the flowrate of the filling pumps will slow down the more filled the tank gets.

For draining the tank it's the other way around, place fluid intake as low as possible inside the tank, the fluid outlet should be at or above sea level, at best.

Valves won't do anything on their own, so you'd need pumps in any case beside using doors to fill tanks.

Also make sure to only use closed circuits of 1x inlet - 1x pump - 1x outlet, had worse results with any other setup.

[Microsoft Excel]

Originally posted by GrumpyOldMan:

What's your issue exactly?

To easily flood a ballast tank you can build small custom doors on the bottom part of the hull,
2 doors with 2x9 blocks each fill up my subs ballast tanks at a rate of ~6k l/s.

If you lack the space for doors or want to use pumps, small pumps will do for flooding a tank, just make sure the input fluid port is as low as you can place it, and put the tanks interior fluid port as high as possible inside the tank, otherwise the pump would have to fight the fluid buildup inside the tank. You can notice this when the tanks filling up, the flowrate of the filling pumps will slow down the more filled the tank gets.

For draining the tank it's the other way around, place fluid intake as low as possible inside the tank, the fluid outlet should be at or above sea level, at best.

Valves won't do anything on their own, so you'd need pumps in any case beside using doors to fill tanks.

Also make sure to only use closed circuits of 1x inlet - 1x pump - 1x outlet, had worse results with any other setup.

Thanks! yeah, its was missing the pumps. I decided to drop the Anti-Listing Ballast, and instead use a Inertia Dampening weight on a slider, but now i got my other Ballast working!

Is there anyway to speed up the draining of a volume? it seems to take a long time to drain my Submersible bay.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by Microsoft Excel:

Is there anyway to speed up the draining of a volume? it seems to take a long time to drain my Submersible bay.

Best case scenario a single pump (no matter if large or small) will pump around 150 l/s.
To increase flowrate simply duplicate the 1x inlet - 1x pump - 1x outlet layout.