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What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 3:26 pm
by je11693
Hi guys, I can't seem to produce enough red circuits. I think it may have something to do with my oil production - my input for the Advanced Oil Processing chemical plants keeps flickering between oil and petroleum gas. Can someone help figure out where I'm going wrong? Happy to attach any other images you need to help solve it.
Oil pumpjacks.png
Oil pumpjacks.png (4.28 MiB) Viewed 4547 times
Chemical plants.png
Chemical plants.png (4.05 MiB) Viewed 4547 times
Oil_Pet.png
Oil_Pet.png (3.56 MiB) Viewed 4547 times
Plastic.png
Plastic.png (3.94 MiB) Viewed 4547 times
Red Circuits.png
Red Circuits.png (4.31 MiB) Viewed 4547 times

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 3:35 pm
by Mr. Tact
The third image shows you have managed to pollute the oil input pipes with Petroleum Gas somehow. You need to remove those pipes and then place them down again.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:01 pm
by eradicator
Contaminated pipes (i.e. more than one fluid in a pipeline) are one of the most annoying things to deal with. You basically have to remove all connected pipe segments and then after you have removed them all, place them down again, to prevent the contamination from happening again. If you have bots you can make a blueprint of the area and use a deconstruction planner filtered to deconstruct pipes only (right click to set filters on the decon planner).

Best practice for complicated pipings is to first construct the whole thing without letting any fluids in, then save the game, let the fluid in, and if you noticed any contaminated pipes immedeately reload and fix.

Grats on the otherwise very nice main bus base :).

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:06 pm
by je11693
Do I have to remove all the pipes on the Light-oil-to-petroleum as well, or just the input pipes for the Advanced Oil Processing?

Thanks, have my silo built but the red circuits (and blue processors) are really holding me back from launching.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:08 pm
by Mr. Tact
Just do the input pipes for now. Unless you see contamination elsewhere...

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:12 pm
by je11693
Ok, all done with my bots. But, the amount of crude flowing is still very weak.
Crude.png
Crude.png (3.98 MiB) Viewed 4534 times

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:14 pm
by eradicator
Do you have enough pumpjacks? Do you have pumps on the way from the oilfield to the factory? How far is the oil field away (rough estimate)? And what do the pumpjacks tooltips say when you hover them (i.e. "2/s")?

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:17 pm
by Mr. Tact
It looked like you were pumping oil into a tank, and then feeding the refineries off the tank. Is that correct? If so, is the tank empty? If not, then you might need a pump or two along the distance between the two. If the tank is empty, then obviously you need more oil production.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:44 pm
by je11693
I have 12 pumpjacks and they are all pumping, but very weak output and the storage tank is empty (the pumpjacks all flicker between 0 and very a low number). The oilfield is in the top left of the second picture, I have put two or three pumps between the tank and the chemical area. It seems to be the pumpjacks, but not sure why (they all have expected resources of between 2.5 and 9 oil per second)
Oil pumpjacks.png
Oil pumpjacks.png (4.28 MiB) Viewed 4516 times
Pumps.png
Pumps.png (344.83 KiB) Viewed 4516 times

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:00 pm
by Mr. Tact
Sounds like you just need more oil. Time to expand and find some more oil fields.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:18 pm
by je11693
Mr. Tact wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:00 pm
Sounds like you just need more oil. Time to expand and find some more oil fields.
The patch I'm using has a yield of 808%. What is standard? This appears to be one of the richest fields. I've seen videos on Youtube of people using less pumpjacks than I am and producing a lot more. So I'm confused why I'm producing so little. My first thought is I've gone wrong somewhere.

Would the oil slow down if I wasn't using the output fast enough e.g. for sulphur etc.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:32 pm
by eradicator
Unlike copper/iro/stone oil is an "infinite" resource. Infinite resources while never completely drying up, do get slower production over time. I think 2/s is the current minimum for oil and you'd need a lot of those to run a factory. Total field yield depends on the number of spots so it's not really that useful. The field on the map i'm currently on has between 9/s and 31/s for each pumpjack (though they often pause).

TL;DR:
If the tank is empty on your field and the pumpjacks are continuously pumping (i.e. the animation never stops) then you have insufficient production and need to find more oil fields :).

Just use math: A refinery on advanced refining needs 100 crude oil every 5 seconds, that's 20 crude per second per refinery.

As a rough estimate "10 fluid" is the same as "1 solid resource" for what it's worth. So imagine 2 oil per second as similar to 0.2 iron per second. Now you know how low that is.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:58 pm
by je11693
eradicator wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:32 pm
Unlike copper/iro/stone oil is an "infinite" resource. Infinite resources while never completely drying up, do get slower production over time. I think 2/s is the current minimum for oil and you'd need a lot of those to run a factory. Total field yield depends on the number of spots so it's not really that useful. The field on the map i'm currently on has between 9/s and 31/s for each pumpjack (though they often pause).

TL;DR:
If the tank is empty on your field and the pumpjacks are continuously pumping (i.e. the animation never stops) then you have insufficient production and need to find more oil fields :).

Just use math: A refinery on advanced refining needs 100 crude oil every 5 seconds, that's 20 crude per second per refinery.

As a rough estimate "10 fluid" is the same as "1 solid resource" for what it's worth. So imagine 2 oil per second as similar to 0.2 iron per second. Now you know how low that is.
So with 8 chemical plants doing advanced oil processing I need 160 oil per second? That's a lot of oil. When I look at other videos of people using 8 advanced oil processing, they never seem to need as many pumpjacks to keep up. I guess I'll need to venture a bit further.. Better get a large amount of pipe!

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:48 pm
by eradicator
If they have rich fields where one pumpjack does 30/s it's not really that much ;).
je11693 wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:58 pm
I guess I'll need to venture a bit further.. Better get a large amount of pipe!
Or use trains with fluid wagons ;). Pumping oil over large distances (1000+ tiles) can be rather slow unless you use lots and lots of pumps.

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:52 pm
by Mr. Tact
eradicator wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:48 pm
Or use trains with fluid wagons ;). Pumping oil over large distances (1000+ tiles) can be rather slow unless you use lots and lots of pumps.
Or use barrels, which is what I prefer and consider using this mod. :mrgreen:

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:55 pm
by eradicator
Mr. Tact wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:52 pm
eradicator wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:48 pm
Or use trains with fluid wagons ;). Pumping oil over large distances (1000+ tiles) can be rather slow unless you use lots and lots of pumps.
Or use barrels, which is what I prefer and consider using this mod. :mrgreen:
Getting barrels right without overproducing and shipping the empty ones back is quite a lot more work than using fluid wagons 8-) .

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 7:04 pm
by Mr. Tact
I've never had problems with it. The first time you send the oil train to the oil field filled with empty barrels, you leave immediately, not allowing a load of oil barrels on board, immediately go back with a second load of empty barrels. Now each time you go, the empty barrels are off loaded simultaneously as the oil barrels are loaded on. It really isn't much different than picking up ore...

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 7:19 pm
by steinio
The first image of the first post here shows the bottom two pumpjacks not connected to the tank because of a missing pipe at the third pumpjack counted from bottom.

There are three oil patches not set up with pumpjacks.

Windows is not activated.
oilfield.png
oilfield.png (4.27 MiB) Viewed 4480 times

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 7:24 pm
by Mr. Tact
Nice, well spotted. Totally missed the unused oil patches. I didn't check the piping on the pump jacks since he claimed they were all working. So, either he fixed the piping, or his definition of "working" needs work. :o

Re: What's wrong with my Oil/Chemicals setup

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 8:23 pm
by je11693
Mr. Tact wrote:
Sat Nov 17, 2018 7:24 pm
Nice, well spotted. Totally missed the unused oil patches. I didn't check the piping on the pump jacks since he claimed they were all working. So, either he fixed the piping, or his definition of "working" needs work. :o
Yeah sorry, I fixed it after the first post but didn't want to post another big picture and take up space. I connected two more oilfields to the Advanced Oil Processing setup, but I'm still having the same problem - the crude runs for a couple of minutes but then stops. Could it be an output issue after it gets converted to petroleum? I've also noticed that my light and heavy oil outputs never really get very strong.