Fluid Pump information?

[Mechanos]

Is there a wiki anywhere that actually tells the numbers of various components, such as fluid pumps? Having to test so many unknown variables is such a drag.

In case anyone's curious about why I'm wanting actual numbers... I'm trying a submarine from scratch. But I can't seem to bilge in water very fast. I skipped testing the small pump and went to a large pump with regular fluid port. When it was way too slow, I tried the large impeller pump with an electric motor on it. Still slow. Added some 1:3 gearing... I think I overloaded the motor. Still got a speed increase, but not a lot. Electric motors eat a lot of power too, so going that direction may not be a great idea. I'm thinking I need to spam regular small pumps or large pumps, possibly with dedicated ports per pump. But without actual numbers, I don't know if I'm running into limitations such as.. will I need the large port? Will I need more than 1 pipe? Etc etc.

Please and thanks for any advice, or if you can point me to a wiki that doesn't just list the information you can see in-game.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by Mechanos:

Is there a wiki anywhere that actually tells the numbers of various components, such as fluid pumps? Having to test so many unknown variables is such a drag.

The developers seem adamant to keep information as cryptic as possible and steer clear of any connections to real world metrics in the game.
Back in the days you could gather from the wiki that 1 mass = 1kg. People started trying to figure out fuel/water weight/density using that information, which caused the info to be removed, to stop further discussion on that topic. Go figure.

Just take a look at the snarky ticket made by the head developer himself which resulted in the wiki kg entry to be removed:
http://mcro.org/issues/view_issue/21635

There's also plenty of other elaborate and valid tickets concerning the electrical system amongst others, which have been shut down in a similar manner, with the canon of "it's a game first" as explanation as to why there's not more correlation to known physical terms and units.

And out of the blue we're getting modular engines where you have to control air/fuel ratio to reach desired stoichiometric at certain temperatures while electricity is still a simple value between 0 and 1.

Make of that what you will.

About the wiki, not sure if it's still maintained, since the last excellent fellow has left the community.

Now to your fluid issues:
These things tend to change without any mention in the changelog, so take it with a grain of salt.
My last findings were that all fluid ports can reach 150l/s transfer rate maximum, except fluid hose anchor and fluid connector. I didn't test valves or filters but they surely will affect the maximum transfer rate.

To increase that past 150l/s your best bet is to use fluid exhausts for fluid in/outlets and use a single pipe for transfer, since branching off limits the flow.
Parallel circuits are necessary to go past that.

For filling tanks with ocean water you can also use huge custom doors on the bottom to fill the tanks in excess of 10kl/s. Those custom doors are also disproportionately heavy compared to other doors, which also helps to gain more ballast.

You can always test limitations yourself, using a microcontroller, delta block and multiply the delta of the fluid level by 60 to get liters per second rate of change.

[Mechanos]

Thank you, that's pretty informative. Idk why I didn't think about using a door.. I already have 2 automated hatches on top (one for engines when I surface, one for an airlock), and I was even searching hoping to find some kind of valve that would let outside water pressure spray in instead of needing pumped. Idk why I didn't put 2 and 2 together.

Sounds like I'll still need to do some port testing for pumping out. I really didn't want to have to make a test rig... but if wiki's are discouraged that much, then I guess I have no other choice. I'll be sure to test the fluid exhaust too based on your tip. Also multiple pumps.. I heard there's diminishing returns, but I also heard water pressure from depth hits a point where a single pump can't handle it. Or I could think of a workaround.. like a belly thruster to lift me to the surface so the pumps can empty again maybe.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by Mechanos:

Sounds like I'll still need to do some port testing for pumping out. I really didn't want to have to make a test rig...

Pumping out will be slow-ish.
You can use multiple dedicated circuits like this:
Fluid port on bottom of tank -> pump -> fluid port above sealevel
Should provide the fastest way to empty ballast tanks.
Unless you lift your sub above sealevel and open the flood gates, heh.

Gravity works on fluids, you can have a full tank at 10m height, with multiple empty tanks below, connected only with pipes and fluid ports, no pumps, fluid will accumulate on the bottommost tanks.
Also provides resistance when emptying and filling a tank, you want to use fluid ports on the bottom of a tank to drain it, and ports on the top to fill it, so pumps don't have to fight against pressure.

Originally posted by Mechanos:

Also multiple pumps.. I heard there's diminishing returns, but I also heard water pressure from depth hits a point where a single pump can't handle it. Or I could think of a workaround.. like a belly thruster to lift me to the surface so the pumps can empty again maybe.

Multiple pumps might work better against pressure, never tested it thoroughly, since a depth of 20m already puts quite a strain on the pumps.
You can also add some kind of snorkel using winches, with fluid ports on the snorkel and just pump the ballast water out using the snorkel, can also be used to provide air for diesel engines.

[maestro]

I think I had my best luck with subs when I went for neutral buoyancy and simply rising and sinking using propellers instead of trying to empty and fill tanks. It helps to have a system where you can enter a desired depth and have the sub go there. Just a FYI.

[CMDR Sweeper]

Well the size of the ports from what I have seen in testing doesn't matter except for looks.
If you need to pump out at depth, well you will find that you can get stuck at the bottom at some point and pumping will not help you.
The trick then is to use an exploit and put a couple of fluid nozzles around the inside of your boat (Hidden compartment) and pump the ballast water into those, as they turn it into a spray that effectively deletes the water, and will allow you to raise to the surface, although slowly.

[Mechanos]

Whelp.. I built a test rig. Results are not promising. If you try to use the same pipe for multiple pumps, whether incoming or outgoing (I tested both individually), the flow rate is more than halved for some reason. So existing wiki data about increases with diminishing returns, seem to be false now.. because more pumps = less than a single pump. It's even worse if you daisy chain the pumps in a line too, still resulting in less than half of the performance of a single pump. Fluid port doesn't seem to matter much because of this, as if ports actually have a max rate, the pumps aren't hitting it.

With a large pump, I tested a regular small fluid port for both pulling water at surface level and output into a tank, and got numbers varying between 108-115 units a second. This is with about 11 length of pipes going to the ocean, and 1 length of pipe going to the tank. Changing the fluid port to a fluid exhaust, had about the same speed. Flow rate seems to change a little between each test, locking itself at a specific rate, and I'm not certain why, as each test is with the same rig in the same spot. Changing the fluid port to a large fluid port was about the same too.

I also tested the small/regular fluid pump. 75 to 81 units a second, and surprisingly used the same amount of power as the large pump, 0.343 swatts a second. Switching back to the large pump, resulted in a glitch where the next couple tests reported small pump numbers until I deleted a port then re-added it, which seemed to update the system to use large pump numbers. Very odd.

Continuing, I tested a small impeller pump with electric motor at 1:1 ratio, 53 u/s at 7.3585 sw/s, which was terrible. 2:1 ratio lowered both performance and power used, so I don't think the motor has enough torque for an impeller. Switching to large impeller at 1:1 ratio, the port glitch happened again and gave me small impeller results 'till I deleted the port and re-added it. After fixing it, I got 63 u/s at 3.7 sw/s to 4 sw/s, which still sucks but was at least better than the small impeller.

Summary: Large Pump spam seems to be the only real option, with dedicated pipes/ports resulting in 108-115 units a second per closed system, regardless of ports used.

Lastly, after reading @CMDR Sweeper's mention of using fluid nozzles to delete water, I tested that. It seems to work, but only at about 5 units a second per nozzle, regardless of nozzle location (tested the nozzle inside the same tank and tested outside spraying into the air). You weren't kidding about that "slowly" part.

[CMDR Sweeper]

Yes, to make it go faster you will have to have a lot of nozzles which is commonly done for firefighting craft, but then you do not have to fight the pressure outside a submarine.
Daisy chaining large pumps will let you get water overboard at greater depths, but at some point you will meet diminishing returns...
The nozzle trick will let you get away with it regardless of the depth, but you may have to put a lot of them to get the rate you want.

[Mechanos]

With a relatively small submarine (fits in the starter dock) I'm guessing I'm going to need at least 1000 water units a second transfer speed for the ballast to have any meaningful usage. Probably more. Nozzles being 5 units a second, that's 200 nozzles minimum, costing 100 a piece. That will double to triple the cost of my submarine, on top of the concern about lag induced from activating 200-400 nozzles. ....I might as well test it, but I'm scared.

[whitew01f]

The daisy chaining of pumps, can increase flow; if they have a water tank to divert pressure into (T-piped to side or top of system). A pump filling a tank, then a pump empties it simultaneously, thus flow is maintained. Should still be the case.

[pontfogel]

I haven't tried the impeller pumps in a sub yet, but when hooking a large impeller pump up to a fluid cannon and powering it with a medium engine I could almost extinguish fires on the moon. I had to use a gearbox to reduce the rps going to the pump. They can definitely be more powerful than electric pumps under certain conditions and it would be unfortunate (but very typical) if this extra power cannot be utilised when pumping fluids in and out of a tank.

[Mechanos]

That sounds useful. Only problem though, like you mentioned, is I'm testing pumps for usage with a submarine. Which means no air for regular engines, unless I want to make a gigantic snorkel. So my impeller test was using electric motors, which seem to be super inefficient. Admittedly I haven't figured out what the best throttle would be for electric motors to get peak efficiency though, so I only tested the small one full throttle.

[pontfogel]

What kind of rps did you manage with the electric motor?

[Mechanos]

About 9 if I use 1:1. But it drops fairly quick if I try to increase gear ratio at all.

[Mechanos]

Originally posted by whitew01f:

The daisy chaining of pumps, can increase flow; if they have a water tank to divert pressure into (T-piped to side or top of system). A pump filling a tank, then a pump empties it simultaneously, thus flow is maintained. Should still be the case.

So I tested this. Adding a small sea water tank along the pipe in between the daisy chained pumps, does increase flow over daisy chaining without the tank. But it still only flows at single pump speed, almost as if the 2nd pump's flow is being nullified by the tank. I should note that I haven't tested this at depth, so I can't comment on if daisy chaining with the tank in between, would help get passed water pressure limitations or not.

[maestro]

There's no flexible fluid simulation running in the game. No actual "fluid" going through the pipes, it's just some very basic algorithms the devs set up that do what they should. It's a good effort. Trying to simulate fluids in a modular way. Unfortunately, this is hyped by a percent of people who propose outright that modular cooling works great. I honestly am no expert on it.

To this end, there is no convincing evidence of legitimate cooling with modular engines.. to me at least.

The good news is the old engines have survived mostly intact and they can at least survive the heat .