Old chem plant setup...fixable?

[GrumpyJoe]

Oops. Now I have to sever it, drain or remove them

I dont get it why this is/was such a problem to begin with.

I may not be a worthy example, but in almost 3000h of playing this game, i had to drain/rebuild like 10 times total.
While the MEEP MEEP sound of wrong input connection, and/or machines not able to turn 90°because i set the reciepe before to even know what goes where (pY chemicals ) , is a CONSTANT nuisance since 0.17 and at the very least interupts my build flow. We even had the server crash (or maybe just me desyncing, cant remember) because of that at early 0.17 releases, but i get it its beta, can happen.

The machines are not running before i put something in at the top of the chain
At the very least, pipes should only reserve something from actual input.
That would prevent you from injecting something wrong in an already running system

If you start long chains one after the other, you get the same result: you will spot mistakes yourself before they go horribly wrong
While in the OP example it says: you cant do that, it will mix fluids, when it clearly doesn´t!
The current system is not only NOT helping me, its providing false information, disallowing builds that worked before and would work now.
How is that a good thing?

Thats what i meant with dumbing down the game. Whats next? Item mixing prevention by reserving half belts, so NOTHING can go wrong?
I know, belts can be cleared alot easier, but in essence, its the same thing.
Some wrong placed splitters/filters can pollute a belt long after you went away to do something else, stopping some/all assemblers and some of those errors are not easy to spot if you have those wrong items sitting on an underground belt.
Filling and emptying your inventory with items you have to pick up from polluted belts takes just as much efford as it does to make a BP of your pipes, deconstruct and place them again.

[Mr. Tact]

That's a good point. I've certainly spent far more time clearing "polluted" belts than I ever did fixing "polluted" pipes.

[mrvn]

I don't see any reason that the game can't check an entire pipe once every time the recipe changes, and if the pipe is completely empty and not hooked up to any other inputs, just change it. Of course, this wouldn't allow you to switch from regular to advanced oil processing with multiple refineries, but at least it'd allow you to clear the recipes and reset them without removing the pipes, so long as you didn't allow oil in them in the first place.

The game actually does that. But as long as a chemical plant is connected to the water pipe the pipe will be set to water.

So first clear the recipe on all the plants. Then an empty pipe will show up as empty instead of water. And then you can set the new recipe on all the chemical plants.

[mrvn]

I see that annoyance level depends on player's accuracy and playstyle and current solution is far from perfect. Maybe cleaning function would have been a better option. You could open a small control window by clicking any pipe, just like many other entities, and there would be "clean line" -button, which would remove all liquids in all pipe components connected to that pipe. It may be unrealistic, but if we accept that we can hold dozens of locomotives, factories and orbital rocket launching equipment in pocket for practical reasons, in my opinion we could also accept disappearing of few liters of chemicals by a button press for practical reasons.

I dont see how that would be possible
The new system marks a pipe(system, as far as connected) with the fluid of the first connected machine. There is actually no fluid in it if the machine isn´t already working, still its reserved for one fluid only, showing 0.0 of that (lets say 0.0 light oil, at a single pipe, connected to a refinery that never ran cos crude is not connected)

You couldn´t even prepare those unmodded refineries water intakes, as before Advanced Oil Processing, both inputs are oil and it doesn´t allow a water connection.
And thats an input, there cant be crude oil coming out of it

The problem is that crude oil can come out of an input. Specifically when the oil refinery has some crude oil in it's fluid box and you deconstruct it or change the recipe the buffered crude oil returns to the input pipes as much as will fit.

Imho pipes should simply not connect to inputs/outputs when the fluid type does not match instead of blocking the recipe.

[5thHorseman]

The game actually does that. But as long as a chemical plant is connected to the water pipe the pipe will be set to water.

So first clear the recipe on all the plants. Then an empty pipe will show up as empty instead of water. And then you can set the new recipe on all the chemical plants.

I'd have to try it again but I thought I was sure that I had a pipe connected to nothing, that still showed it had 0 of something in it. Maybe somewhere along the pipe was 0.1 of the fluid or something.

[mrvn]

The game actually does that. But as long as a chemical plant is connected to the water pipe the pipe will be set to water.

So first clear the recipe on all the plants. Then an empty pipe will show up as empty instead of water. And then you can set the new recipe on all the chemical plants.

I'd have to try it again but I thought I was sure that I had a pipe connected to nothing, that still showed it had 0 of something in it. Maybe somewhere along the pipe was 0.1 of the fluid or something.

Or you still had some chemical plant or refinery connected that has a recipe set. If an empty pipe is connected to a fluid box that has a fluid filter set then it becomes a pipe for only that fluid.

[arbarbonif]

Another issue with this is that if you copy the recipe of a chem plant it also copies the orientation. Which is nice until you want to paste it in a mirrored setup and can't because the in and out pipes are reversed. I think having it not connect the pipes to the plant unless the external pipe is empty or contains the same fluid would work way better.

[mrvn]

Another issue with this is that if you copy the recipe of a chem plant it also copies the orientation. Which is nice until you want to paste it in a mirrored setup and can't because the in and out pipes are reversed. I think having it not connect the pipes to the plant unless the external pipe is empty or contains the same fluid would work way better.

Noticed that too. If you try to set the recipe by copy&paste you have to have the right orientation before pasting. Even though the orientation is not pasted at all, only the recipe. I consider that a bug. Would be happy if you could report this as such.