pump bug

[Ph1ld C0rn]

Hi, i'm new player. i tested some models from workshop and realised that pumps work strange: in airlock it sucks not only water but also oxygen, but some water still remains. so i tried to pump out some fuel: it suck REALLY slowly. It is ok? How to fix that?

[Aven]

You should consider anything posted to the Workshop prior to 2024 to be broken. The game is basically in a constant state of flux as long existing systems get fundamentally changed to fit the mold of whatever new thing the devs decide to add the game. The same could be said for many tutorial videos posted prior to 2024.

As an example, prior to October, 2023 you did not need to worry about air or your character suffocating. Air was simply the lack of water in a room. If there was no water, the player could breath, so the pumps used for all airlocks prior to that point could just pump a room empty and the player would be fine. With the changes made for the Space DLC, air now exists, so ventilation of rooms as well as the filtering of air out of your water removal system is a necessity.

[jamespfp]

To OP: I'm a new player myself but I haven't had any trouble understanding why pumps transfer fluids the way they do, and also why the pumps seem to take so long to work at times. The reason has to do with the pressure of the gas inside the ballast tank or airlock or whatever type of chamber is being filled and emptied.

For example, let's suppose IRL you have a small plastic gasoline tank with a long spout to pour through, and you try to fill some other gas tank with it: which way will be faster, when you're just using the spout, or when you've opened up the air vent on the other side of the carrying handle? If we could put a barometer inside that gas tank, we'd see that every time there's a splash of gasoline out of the tank, the air pressure inside drops a little, until an air bubble makes its way up the spout, causing stoppage and turbulence in the out-flow of gasoline. Air isn't coming out of the gas tank with the gasoline, it is simply decompressing to fill the available volume until more air gets into the tank.

Low Pressure, for my money, is way more troublesome with ballast and airlock systems than High Pressure. And, at any rate, there are options in game for how to deal with the differences in pressure so that pumps, even the smallest types, have more than enough power to push (sometimes Pull) gases and/or water through the pipes. The most basic rule of thumb is that Low Pressure "sucks" whereas high pressure "blows", and the greater the difference between the inside and outside of any given pumping system, the more the pressure itself acts as a coefficient to any mechanical work being applied to empty or fill the tank.

Another thought for you about why the pumps suck both liquids and gases: depending on the pressure, the air itself will gain or lose humidity (ie. Water Content) and the water will likewise absorb some of the gases or begin to release the gases. This is what causes "decompression sickness" in divers, after all; being in high pressure environments causes the dissolved gases in our blood to increase and as the pressure is relieved the gases start to expand and form larger bubbles.

Check the in-game "Gas Meter" system: you'll notice that it is capable of monitoring the percentage of air which is steam ie. high humidity. And, it's pretty basic physics to know what happens when a container of water is depressurised. The lower the atmospheric pressure, the lower the boiling point of water: another rule of thumb holds that for every 1000 feet of altitude the boiling point of water drops by 1 degree Celcius. It stands to reason that the thermodynamic reaction with water and air under high pressure will have a measurable impact on the proportion of heat and force any steam or humidity in the air will have.

So yeah, here's the TL;DR ending: the best fluid transfer systems will have at least some kind of pressure relief system as well as a transfer pump on each "loop", intake or outflow. The Gas inside the system can also be directly pumped to some other container or allowed to vent into the same container that the pump is located, so that the pump continues to gain force whichever way it is pumping.

[NiceGuy]

The whole fluid, pressure, tanks and piping system is simply broken since the stupid space dlc. Defs consider it as working as intended and won't fix anything. Love it or better refund it as long as you can.
You can consider most uploads prior to the space dlc as broken unless they got "fixed" by the owner if fixing was possible (mostly it's not).

[Krapfen]

Originally posted by jamespfp:

To OP: I'm a new player myself but I haven't had any trouble understanding why pumps transfer fluids the way they do, and also why the pumps seem to take so long to work at times. The reason has to do with the pressure of the gas inside the ballast tank or airlock or whatever type of chamber is being filled and emptied.

For example, let's suppose IRL you have a small plastic gasoline tank with a long spout to pour through, and you try to fill some other gas tank with it: which way will be faster, when you're just using the spout, or when you've opened up the air vent on the other side of the carrying handle? If we could put a barometer inside that gas tank, we'd see that every time there's a splash of gasoline out of the tank, the air pressure inside drops a little, until an air bubble makes its way up the spout, causing stoppage and turbulence in the out-flow of gasoline. Air isn't coming out of the gas tank with the gasoline, it is simply decompressing to fill the available volume until more air gets into the tank.

Low Pressure, for my money, is way more troublesome with ballast and airlock systems than High Pressure. And, at any rate, there are options in game for how to deal with the differences in pressure so that pumps, even the smallest types, have more than enough power to push (sometimes Pull) gases and/or water through the pipes. The most basic rule of thumb is that Low Pressure "sucks" whereas high pressure "blows", and the greater the difference between the inside and outside of any given pumping system, the more the pressure itself acts as a coefficient to any mechanical work being applied to empty or fill the tank.

Another thought for you about why the pumps suck both liquids and gases: depending on the pressure, the air itself will gain or lose humidity (ie. Water Content) and the water will likewise absorb some of the gases or begin to release the gases. This is what causes "decompression sickness" in divers, after all; being in high pressure environments causes the dissolved gases in our blood to increase and as the pressure is relieved the gases start to expand and form larger bubbles.

Check the in-game "Gas Meter" system: you'll notice that it is capable of monitoring the percentage of air which is steam ie. high humidity. And, it's pretty basic physics to know what happens when a container of water is depressurised. The lower the atmospheric pressure, the lower the boiling point of water: another rule of thumb holds that for every 1000 feet of altitude the boiling point of water drops by 1 degree Celcius. It stands to reason that the thermodynamic reaction with water and air under high pressure will have a measurable impact on the proportion of heat and force any steam or humidity in the air will have.

So yeah, here's the TL;DR ending: the best fluid transfer systems will have at least some kind of pressure relief system as well as a transfer pump on each "loop", intake or outflow. The Gas inside the system can also be directly pumped to some other container or allowed to vent into the same container that the pump is located, so that the pump continues to gain force whichever way it is pumping.

Very kind of you to write an essay, however the entire fluid and gas system is broken. And thats fact.

Try building a box and put some valves at the bottom and top of it obviously with fluid ports or whatever, add some weight to the bottom of the box to help it sink. Now open the valves after having spawned the box into the world and watch how it doesnt fill up with water at all even if it has a relief valve. And before anyone says use pumps, they only help by a few hundred litres. Imma be real with you if a simple box cant fill up with water then the game just straight up sucks.

In real life if you made a box and opend a valve at the bottom of it, then another at the top it would fill up with water while sinking, a thing that does not happen in this very game which is a physics simulated game about vehicles on/in water.

Heres a video by frantic from a month ago with water just stuck in his open wheelhouse;

https://youtu.be/c77R_YnJYQw?si=iDp2ZUBOVoaOBKEH&t=1375

Just goes to show that the entire physics system is just busted. Keep in mind that shortly after the original update for the gasses the fluid and gasses were moving around fine and the only problem was bouyancy, then they "fixed" it and broke the fluids and gasses.

Personally I am too lazy to report this as a bug because the website that stormworks uses literally forces you to login via Steam and I am not going to to log into some random website with my account to report a bug.

I am sorry if this is post is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but I swear to god having spent a year working on a realistic submarine and then getting it to work with the gasses only for them to "fix" it and completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ break it also breaks my mind. Not to mention that this very thing also messed up alot of other mechanics and it is by no means close to what realism could be in a game sim like this.


Also need to edit this because I know people are going to bring this up: I double checked the flow directions of the gasses and fluids several times and the respective valves etc.. Keep in mind I tried to get this to work for months.

[jamespfp]

RE: "... the only problem was Bouyancy..."; Which is why I said I'd prefer to be working with air inside of ballast tanks that is under high pressure rather than low. Low pressure is inversely proportional to the size of the air gap, depending on how much air is actually inside the tank. When it drops below 1 ATM for a given volume, the tank starts to suck as expected and loses bouyancy.

Also, sorry to write so much when you didn't even ask for a reply, nor post the original comment. I haven't had any trouble understanding the why although I have certainly noted that simply opening up vents on the top and bottom of tanks doesn't act as expected. My guess is that there's a bottleneck being introduced by the vents and pipes themselves, so the best "vent" is a bloody open hatchway or a door on the top, sides or bottom of the tank.

o7

[Krapfen]

Originally posted by jamespfp:

RE: "... the only problem was Bouyancy..."; Which is why I said I'd prefer to be working with air inside of ballast tanks that is under high pressure rather than low. Low pressure is inversely proportional to the size of the air gap, depending on how much air is actually inside the tank. When it drops below 1 ATM for a given volume, the tank starts to suck as expected and loses bouyancy.

Also, sorry to write so much when you didn't even ask for a reply, nor post the original comment. I haven't had any trouble understanding the why although I have certainly noted that simply opening up vents on the top and bottom of tanks doesn't act as expected. My guess is that there's a bottleneck being introduced by the vents and pipes themselves, so the best "vent" is a bloody open hatchway or a door on the top, sides or bottom of the tank.

o7

I dont know if you played the game back then but every single boat or ship in the game was far too low below the waterline because the devs admittedly messed up the bouyancy system... plus the bottleneck cant be an issue either because Ive put as many vents and pipes as the entire box is wide for both the bottom and the top.

If you dont believe me about the bouyancy thingy, check it out on the discord, people were posting images and all that of the bouyancy problem.

Dont get me wrong you can solve some problems in this game logically but that only gets you so far when alot of the features dont work as they should....

Besides the door solution would work but by god they are too large to put anywhere on the creation to not mess up the way its intended to look you know? As of right now I have given up on building submarines, but I certainly will continue working on them once I figure out a way to get it to work or it gets fixed

[jamespfp]

I already stated, a new player and moreover I'm paying attention to player feedback that predates my time. I've had no trouble sorting out what should be working and the reason I feel confident enough to contribute here and now is because I can control what happens to AIr, Water, Pressure and Bouyancy after very little in-game and with relatively few iterations in design to correct my mistaken assumptions. I don't expect utterly realistic simulation and given the tendency of the game to slow down as the length of a play session increases it makes sense to me to look for efficient and practical methods regardless of the ongoing state of development.

[Krapfen]

Originally posted by jamespfp:

I already stated, a new player and moreover I'm paying attention to player feedback that predates my time. I've had no trouble sorting out what should be working and the reason I feel confident enough to contribute here and now is because I can control what happens to AIr, Water, Pressure and Bouyancy after very little in-game and with relatively few iterations in design to correct my mistaken assumptions. I don't expect utterly realistic simulation and given the tendency of the game to slow down as the length of a play session increases it makes sense to me to look for efficient and practical methods regardless of the ongoing state of development.

Can explain how to get the ballast tank to completely fill up without using any pumps? I would def appreciate that. I got the ballast blowing to work but not the filling up, it used to work perfectly fine like irl but not currently due to the systems being broken.

Its pretty straight forward, you have valves and ports below the waterline to let water in and the same uptop to relieve the pressure, yet it does not seem to work, I have ballast tanks of 25000 L capacity for fluid each yet the maximum they fill up without pumps is about 5 to 8.000 L and with pumps they max do 16.000L it eventually just levels out no matter the depth. And I need them to fill up because otherwise the submarine will just swim back to the surface if going to slow