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I've been trying to understand the fluid system enough to determine how differently multiple offshore pumps to 1 pipeline will behave versus 1 offshore pump per separate pipeline.

So I know that the offshore pump operates at 1200/s but it is unclear how fast pipes themselves work relating to offshore pumps. The fluid system wiki says in the pipeline section that 1 electric pump to another separated by 1 pipe at 5400/s and the electric pump itself operates at 12000/s. But would that table also apply to offshore pumps?

If so, then it seems to me using more than 4 offshore pumps on a pipeline is increasingly ineffective. But I have no idea if this is correct. I read XKnights post on fluid mechanics but my head exploded lol

All I really want to know is, as a general rule of thumb, how many offshore pumps can I use on a given series of regular pipes before adding more becomes ineffective.

Thanks!

Pipes generally move 1200/s for any reasonably long distance. They can pump more but only over extremely short distances.

One pump per pipe line is good enough. If you have a very short run then you can get partial use from a double pump.

adam_bise wrote:The fluid system wiki says in the pipeline section that 1 electric pump to another separated by 1 pipe at 5400/s and the electric pump itself operates at 12000/s. But would that table also apply to offshore pumps?

You can merge three 4000/s lines into a single tank to feed your 12000/s pump line. Each 4000/s feeder line requires 4 offshore pumps.

If you want more detailed info on pipe throughput here's a great reddit post from u/bam13302:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... s_for_015/

Don't remember where this originally came from, but i have this table of "how many things can be between two pumps". Flow is a generic number of flow speed, the higher the faster. Pip/Boiler/Tank is the amount of things you can have between two pumps and not lose that speed. I.e. for 35 "flow" you can have at most 66 boilers, 2 tanks or 2 pipes between two pumps.

So boiler is a best pipe?

And what is a flow of 35? It's certainly not 35 liquid/s. A rather pointless value if you don't give a unit.

As for tanks being the best pipes: Inly if you have a pump before and after it. The tank/pipe connection is horribly slow.

The tank/pipe connection isn't slow, it is just highly dependent on the level in the tank. Low tank level = low output pressure. Tanks make good buffers for pressure variations, refinery clusters for instance guzzle a large amount of fluid per production batch, causing sags in pressure. You'll either want to have a pump feeding into them (maximizing tank level and therefor output pressure continuously) or out of them (allowing for a partially filled tank with max output pressure still).

As for the best pipes over distance: A connected underground pipe counts as one pipe and covers 10 distance max. These are more efficient then boilers at short to mid distances.

[Edit] And the graph above: Flow should be multiplied by 100. That graph's from before the 0.15 patch where the fluid stat got reworked to get rid of fractions. The values were simply multiplied by 100. So for a pump, if you want to maintain full flow rate, you'd need to take the values for 12... possibly 13 or 14 to be safe. And I'm not quite sure that these values hold up... 200+ pipes would definately not give a flow rate of 1200, even with pumps on both ends.

Aeternus wrote:[Edit] And the graph above: Flow should be multiplied by 100. That graph's from before the 0.15 patch where the fluid stat got reworked to get rid of fractions.

Nope. I found the source after some more googling: [0.15.x] Fluid mechanics
So flow should be fluid per tick. Which means for a pump with 1200/s you need flow=20, which is only 16 pipes. Roughly.

eradicator wrote:So flow should be fluid per tick. Which means for a pump with 1200/s you need flow=20, which is only 16 pipes. Roughly.

After 50 pipes get 0 flow?

darkfrei wrote:After 50 pipes get 0 flow?

Other way around. Pipes won't do more than 50 flow.