Wasting sulfuric acid (and maybe other fluids)?

[Yes-Man]

I'm still quite new to Factorio and was trying to build a blue circuit assembly line.

My initial setup is using level 2 assembly machines (4 of them) and one chemical plant to produces the acid on-site.
The chemical plant is directly connected to the assemblers using only pipes. It's also close by.

After building all of this an powering it up, I noticed that the chemical plant was running quite often and wondered
if it would be enough to support the 4 assemblers. I consulted the online planner (http://doomeer.com/factorio, great tool!)
and learned that one chemical plant should be sufficient for about 250! level 2 assembly machines building blue circuits.

So why was it running all the time? It seems like every time an assembler draws the smallest amount of liquid from the pipe,
the plant feels compelled to produce another badge of acid. But the amount is muuuch to high. So the rest just vanishes?
I think introducing a storage tank into the system helped, but I'm still wondering if it's by design.
Are the pipes not acting as storage? And why does the plant feel the need to fill every last bit of room in the pipes immediately?

Can anyone confirm or refute my observations?

[Shokubai]

This is completely normal up until the buffer space inside the pipe, the AM, and the, chemical plant is full. After this the Plant should fire up once it's internal buffer drops below a certain point. This will still be quite frequent since it wants to refill the buffer ASAP.

Game logic works a little like this.

A
Lets pretend a plant makes 200 of a gas per 10 seconds.
Lets pretend my 4 AM use a total of 100 per 5 seconds.
Input matches output and the plant will never stop producing in order to satisfy demand

B
Lets pretend a plant makes 200 of a gas per 10 seconds.
Lets pretend my 4 AM use a total of 10 per 5 seconds.
This means I have a surplus of 180 gas per 10 seconds. This surplus will keep being made until all pipes and buffers are filled.
The next AM turn 10 gas it taken from my buffer
The plant sees room in the network and processes a turn to refill the buffer.

Now, I've never looked at the buffer close enough to know if it allows the plant to actually waste resources. like I said the buffer has to drop to a certain level before the plant will even kick in. Perhaps it's enough for a full output but you would want to test that.

This is an oversimplification but is more or less what happens.

[Xeorm]

The factories won't waste fluid. The factories will only produce resources if there's room, up to the storage capacity. You'll see this especially with oil plants, as they won't produce if one output is maxed out, even if all you care about is one of the oils.

Possibilities on what you're seeing that I can think of: You're not noticing just how little the plant is actually working. The actual recipe takes .4 seconds, and should be activating every 2.5 circuit cycles. The reason the one plant can supply so many factories is the time it takes to make a single blue circuit, so it's possible you're looking at it and seeing that it very often needs to make sure after a circuit cycle...because it does have to.

Then there's possibly problems with production. The plant will try to fill the pipes and it's own storage up to the maximum. If it takes time to get enough materials to produce, it's possible that you're seeing it try to fill. Not sure. Can't tell if the system is full without proof.

[Yes-Man]

I tested it again and came to the following result:

- first I had a buffer storage tank connect and the chemical plant was activating very rarely
- then I disconnected the tank and connect the plant to the AMs directly (using about 20 empty pipes)
- then the plant work feverishly to probably fill up the pipes for a (quite long while)
- after something between 10 and 20 plant cycles it stopped at went back to its leisurely pace from before

So I assume I was too fast disconnecting the plant in the first place and should have waited a little longer.
Probably no fluid is lost. But it still looks weird. I'll most certainly build a storage tank anyway to buffer my
production. Thanks for the answers

[Harkonnen604]

With buffer storage tank it should work feverishly for much much longer until tank is full. Tank equals 250 pipes magically packed in 4 tiles.

[Frightning]

With buffer storage tank it should work feverishly for much much longer until tank is full. Tank equals 250 pipes magically packed in 9 tiles.

ftfy (it's 3x3)