Confizzled why my plastics factory stopped

[DJQuad]

Ah oil, the most frustrating mechanic

So I made an outpost just for plastic. I'm also cracking light oil to petroleum and heavy oil into light. The only full tanks are crude oil, all others are basically empty. I've checked all of the pipes and they seem to be fine.

noplastic.png (2.09 MiB) Viewed 1934 times

I can upload the save if it's easier.

[Loewchen]

Because you do not have enough gas, because the refineries can not work, because they can not output light oil, because your circuit logic does not work.

[astroshak]

AOP refineries produce three things, yes?

Take the HO, put it into a tank. Off of this tank, feed the LO crackers. Also, if desired, make lube off of this tank.

Take the LO, put it in a tank. Feed the tank from the HO->LO crackers as well. Off this tank, feed the LO->PG crackers, as well (if desired) make Solid Fuel and Rocket Fuel.

Take the PG, put it in a tank. Feed this tank from the LO->PG crackers as well. Now send this to wherever you need PG.

[DJQuad]

Thanks for both responses. Does this look correct?

circuit.png (2.87 MiB) Viewed 1880 times

The pumps on petroleum, light oil, and heavy oil are all set to > 1k. If it looks ok, I'm assuming I'm going to need a lot more of everything because this setup can only support about 1 1/2 rows of plastic production. My goal is 8.

This is actually my first attempt at circuits so they're new to me. I've managed to avoid them until now.

[orzelek]

It looks like your cracking capacity is not enough so everything backs up.

[Serenity]

Try cracking LO when LO > x. And crack HO when HO > x. Petroleum doesn't need conditions. Another way is to crack HO when HO > LO (I think. Never really used that)

Your ratios may be off:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... bar:r:1800

For one red belt of plastic you need 15 plastic plants, 16 refineries, 4 HO crackers and 13-14 LO crackers
In particular it seems you aren't cracking enough light oil. With circuits you don't need exact numbers, but you still need to have the potential to produce everything you need

In general, if you need that much plastic use beacons and modules. It drastically cuts down on the numbers:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... ll;null:16
4 plastic plants can fill a blue belt that way

[astroshak]

You don’t want to stack tanks like that. One tank should be enough, not four, and flow from one tank to another is pathetic anyway.

Your petroleum gas storage tanks, you have one tank with a pump going towards plastics. You have a line coming back from that plastics line to the tank. All you’re doing there is setting up for PG to go in a loop, not doing what you want it to do.

Instead of having the plastics machines fed directly off of the LO->PG cracking machines, run the line from the LO->PG chem plants to the tanks, and have the pump from the PG tank be the only feed for your plastics machines.

[Serenity]

The best is probably to just have the tank off to the side without anything actually running through them. Then they are just overflow storage like they're supposed to

[PyroFire]

I've checked all of the pipes and they seem to be fine.

Bottom line, your pipes are not fine.
Check them again.

[astroshak]

The best is probably to just have the tank off to the side without anything actually running through them. Then they are just overflow storage like they're supposed to

I disagree, simply because tank outflow is horrible without a pump, and pumps are one-way only.

You can have a tank act as storage whether it is in-line or an offshoot. But only an in-line tank can actually push fluid out by pump. Offshoot tanks cannot do that. A tank holding 12500 of its 25000 fluid (aka 50%) only tries to fill adjacent pipes to 50 fluid, NOT to 100 fluid. You need a pump for that.