Factorio Forums

is it possible to transport oil via train somehow?

Oil barrels.

So, are the barrels available in the game?

DRBLN wrote:So, are the barrels available in the game?

Yes, you make them out of steel then load them up in a chemical plant hooked up to your crude oil supply with "Fill crude oil" or something to that effect and it'll fill them up for transport. It's really not very efficient though just so you know. I don't think the barrels actually hold that much oil.

Barrels hold 10 units of crude oil and stack up to 8. You get the barrel back when you empty it at the destination chemical plant, so efficiency isn't that bad. It is a fairly fast process and can be expanded easily with additional chemical plants.

Honestly, I just don't see the point in using trains at all... especially for transporting oil.
Building pipe line is so much cheaper and easier.
Maybe it would be worth it if your oil source is reeeeeeealy far away.

Yeah. And I'm sure it will. Think to something where you need 2 minutes to drive to with the train.

Trains are made for deliver huge amounts of goods for a very far distance.

Hm. What if i am the train fan? And i want to transport my oil by trains indeed.
And what about tank-wagon? It will be more adequate then transporting oil in barrels in cargo wagons. By the way, in tank-wagon trains could transport any luquid, not only crude oil.

I see a big problem with wagons for fluids only: they can take only one type of fluid. So they can be used for another fluid only, if they are empty.
But this is in discrepancy to the use, most players would like to use it for!

ssilk wrote:I see a big problem with wagons for fluids only: they can take only one type of fluid.

I am not sure, that understood you corretly. But why "one type liquid at time"-thing is "big problem"? Real tankwagons can contain one type of liquid at time too.

You need to empty them completely, before you can fill in new things.

Because so many problems pop up:
- if the tanks at target station are full, we cannot do that
- we have currently no mechanism to see, if a wagon is empty,
- and which.
- what should happen, if I fill in another type of liquid in a non-empty wagon?
- and some more questions into this direction...

Or in other words: everything is easier, if you can use a wagon only for one type of liquid. The wagons are fixed to the type of liquid. Or the fixation happens, when first filled up. In my eyes this is a strong limitation of the usefulness.

Another option is, that we have advanced logistics, that we are able to fill exactly the needed amount into a wagon, that it can be emptied at the target. But how complex is that? And when will it be implemented?

And I don't see any problem with the barrels. I like this filling and emptying, the complex logistic behind it, it makes fun and enables crude strategies, which are not possible with tank-wagons.

What we currently need here is to handle with the information/complex logistics about far train stations/storages - I've written some articles about it. And when that works well, yes, THEN we can try tank-wagons.

ssilk wrote:You need to empty them completely, before you can fill in new things.

Because so many problems pop up:
- if the tanks at target station are full, we cannot do that
- we have currently no mechanism to see, if a wagon is empty,
- and which.
- what should happen, if I fill in another type of liquid in a non-empty wagon?
- and some more questions into this direction...

Or in other words: everything is easier, if you can use a wagon only for one type of liquid. The wagons are fixed to the type of liquid. Or the fixation happens, when first filled up. In my eyes this is a strong limitation of the usefulness.

Another option is, that we have advanced logistics, that we are able to fill exactly the needed amount into a wagon, that it can be emptied at the target. But how complex is that? And when will it be implemented?

And I don't see any problem with the barrels. I like this filling and emptying, the complex logistic behind it, it makes fun and enables crude strategies, which are not possible with tank-wagons.

What we currently need here is to handle with the information/complex logistics about far train stations/storages - I've written some articles about it. And when that works well, yes, THEN we can try tank-wagons.

Ok, in other words tankwagons should act like usual tank, but problem is in some kind of "liquid inserters" for that type of wagon.

In my opinion, barrels is unnecessary intermediate node in liquid transportation in wagons, ant it was made to solve that problem for now.

Any way, thank you for so detailed response

Yes, but don't mix me up with the devs. I'm just a member of the forum, like you, and what I'm saying is in most cases good guess, what the devs might think.

ssilk wrote:Yes, but don't mix me up with the devs. I'm just a member of the forum, like you, and what I'm saying is in most cases good guess, what the devs might think.

Yes, i know, for example devs have "alien-artifact" neat avater, instead of inserter

Theoretically, what would you do differently if you could put 2+ types of fluid in a tank wagon?

How do you know, which one to remove then? I mean, ok, theoretically you need a filter pipe, like a filter inserter. But practically this is ridiculous.
Ok, another solution is, to say, this is not one wagon with two tanks, this is two tanks on one wagon. The pipe connects to the nearest tank. Would work more or less. In curves this might not work, the distance shifts too strong. But I think this isn't a good game element.

immibis wrote:Theoretically, what would you do differently if you could put 2+ types of fluid in a tank wagon?

I wonder at so big discussion about that quite simple wagon Try to put 2+ types of fluid in a usual tank, and look. So behavior should be for tank wagon, I think, there are nothing to invent.

Wagons could have several tanks, exactly as many as they have inventory slots, that would solve the mixing problem. And for emptying them pumps could be upgraded to smart pumps.

As long, as it is unclear, how filling/emptying of a tank wagon can work, I would say it makes no sense to discuss that.