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Choumiko's RailTanker releases, this is where you will find updated versions of RailTanker. I'll try to link them in the first post as they are posted

This mod will most likely die with the release of 0.15, since it's becoming vanilla.

I suggest that you unload your railtankers before updating to 0.15 (and maybe even remove the tankers and then the mod). I will update the mod to run with 0.15 so you can probably empty them even after updating, but i doubt i'll bother with automatically changing the mod tanker with the vanilla one (if it's possible at all).


Edit by Choumiko: I took over this thread until James O'Farrell returns, the Download-Url should now be always up to date.

Type: Mod
Name: Rail Tanker
Description: This is a mod that adds a Rail Tanker to Factorio. This can be used to move any liquid around without having to barrel it up first
License: MIT
Version: 1.4.1
Release: 2017-4-25
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.14.2
Download-Url for 0.15|0.14: Rail Tanker

Website: Github Repo

Cool stuff

A storage tank holding 2.5k is roughly 2x3 tiles (3x3 when placing it, but some space is required for the valves and connections). A train wagon is 2x7 tiles (with some space for connections and stuff), so from that view a capacity approaching 5k wouldn't be too far fetched...

Boogieman14 wrote:A storage tank holding 2.5k is roughly 2x3 tiles (3x3 when placing it, but some space is required for the valves and connections). A train wagon is 2x7 tiles (with some space for connections and stuff), so from that view a capacity approaching 5k wouldn't be too far fetched...

But a chests holds how many items compared to a cargo wagon? I was going to set it at 2.5k but Malachite pointed out that a storage tank holds a lot of liquid and even at 1.25k you will not be filling up a single tanker very often. But if people find this is not the case I will up it for sure.

I was thinking about that too, I guess I would rarely fill a tank at 1k, but then I play RSO most of the time, so it might be different for normal settings (although from what I remember, the games I did play without RSO, I never hauled oil at all because there was way too much in the starting area ) I don't have any strong feelings either way, just thought about it a bit and figured I'd share

JamesOFarrell wrote:

Boogieman14 wrote:A storage tank holding 2.5k is roughly 2x3 tiles (3x3 when placing it, but some space is required for the valves and connections). A train wagon is 2x7 tiles (with some space for connections and stuff), so from that view a capacity approaching 5k wouldn't be too far fetched...

But a chests holds how many items compared to a cargo wagon? I was going to set it at 2.5k but Malachite pointed out that a storage tank holds a lot of liquid and even at 1.25k you will not be filling up a single tanker very often. But if people find this is not the case I will up it for sure.

cool mod more wagons update in storage 5k 10k 25k?

idea
another would be to make for Cartmen mod where conveying gas and liquefied gas

Boogieman14 wrote:I was thinking about that too, I guess I would rarely fill a tank at 1k

I am the same but some other mods are liquid heavy so that might be the push I need.

Airat9000 wrote:another would be to make for Cartmen mod where conveying gas and liquefied gas

So that's one vote for larger tankers. If Cartmen's mod uses the liquid system for gas then it should work with this.

Magnificent.

In real life tankers are the preferred method to transport oil/gas. (Any liquid really. It's just more efficient.)
You don't have to expend energy to fill and un-fill the barrels, nor to move the extra weight of the barrels.

It's also more space efficient than round cylinders with gaps in-between. Here's the math:

radius = 1
Volume of cube = r^3 = 1

radius = 0.5 height = 1
Volume of cylinder = π * r^2 * h = 0.785

(A cylinder with a radius of 0.5 fits within a cube with a radius of 1. http://www.kevinhouston.net/blog/wp-con ... square.png)

About a 21.5% loss in space. If the barrels hold 5k then transporting it as a liquid should gain 1075 units of liquid volume.

This, of course, assumes the transport vessel does not change. Since the default train cargo carriage looks like the top is already arched then we only loose some space rounding out the bottom to make the carriage a complete cylinder. (21.5% / 2 = 10.75%. Since we only need to convert half a cube to half a cylinder.)

Thus we should see a total increase in 537.5 units of liquid volume over the vanilla carriage. (Actually more since the barrels would not have fit uniformly in the top of the curved carriage.)

MasterBuilder wrote:MATHS! Thus we should see a total increase in 537.5 units of liquid volume over the vanilla carriage. (Actually more since the barrels would not have fit uniformly in the top of the curved carriage.)

The bottom of the tanker is rounded but the cargo wagon is square so you would get a little extra space in there, not much though. 5.5k is a lot of liquid to be shipping around but you can't really argue with the numbers. The devs have plans to implement a tanker at some point, it will be interesting to see how they handle this. Even if you decrease the stack size of barrels to 5 that is still 1 storage tank per cargo wagon.

if you take the reality that 1 tanker with oil transports by 80-120 tons of oil or gas, personally see every day, trains with cargo.. the idea is to take their volume

JamesOFarrell wrote:

MasterBuilder wrote:MATHS! Thus we should see a total increase in 537.5 units of liquid volume over the vanilla carriage. (Actually more since the barrels would not have fit uniformly in the top of the curved carriage.)

The bottom of the tanker is rounded but the cargo wagon is square so you would get a little extra space in there, not much though. 5.5k is a lot of liquid to be shipping around but you can't really argue with the numbers. The devs have plans to implement a tanker at some point, it will be interesting to see how they handle this. Even if you decrease the stack size of barrels to 5 that is still 1 storage tank per cargo wagon.

From looking at the vanilla carriage in the game (0.11.x) it looks like the top is rounded but the bottom is square.
If this is true then you gain 10.75% more volume to store liquid when converting to a cylindrical carriage of the same length.
If the vanilla carriage is completely rectangular (and no curved top) then you gain nothing.

When we convert the square bottom to rounded we lose 10.75% volume. Since only half the vanilla carriage is square we lose half our gain of 21.5%.
If we have to convert the whole carriage from rectangular to cylindrical we lose all our gains as the numbers cancel each other out.
i.e. We gain 21.5% converting from cylindrical barrels to liquid storage. Then we lose 21.5% converting from a rectangular carriage to a cylindrical one.

TLDR: It all depends on what you consider the vanilla carriage to be. If rectangular: no gain; if half round/half rectangular: +10.75%.

EDIT:
How much mass/volume is 1 unit of liquid here? I have no clue.
Are tanks & barrels properly balanced? Hell no. I could easily fit more oil in barrels within chests in the same area it takes to place a large tank.
MORE MATH!!!
If a storage chest holds 8 barrels in 48 slots (IIRC) then that's (8*48)*25 for 9600 units of liquid storage. Much much much more liquid can be stored, by volume, in a single chest than any one tank. (This is just for a 1x1 area. A tank is 3x3 so that would mean I could fit 86400 units of liquid in chests for the same space in the game.

MasterBuilder wrote:it looks like the top is rounded but the bottom is square

This is defiantly the case. So there would be slightly more liquid in the tanker than the wagon

MasterBuilder wrote:If a storage chest holds 8 barrels in 48 slots (IIRC) then that's (8*48)*25 for 9600 units of liquid storage

This is the real issue. Wube are not going for realism in Facotrio, they are going for what plays best I think. If that's the case any number that seems fun and balanced is the right number.

Finally!!!! Thanks man!!!!

All this talk about capacity is kind of ignoring the resource cost to actually build the barrels / wagons and assembly line vs the single tanker + pumps.

just my 2 cents though...

Damrus wrote:All this talk about capacity is kind of ignoring the resource cost to actually build the barrels / wagons and assembly line vs the single tanker + pumps.

just my 2 cents though...

Vanilla:
Oil Well > Pumpjack > Pipe > Assembler > Inserter > Barreled Oil > Conveyor > Inserter > Wagon > Inserter > Conveyor > Inserter > Barreled Oil > Assembler > Pipe > Refinery
(To say nothing of Storage Tanks, Chests, & Logistic Robots.)

Mod:
Oil Well > Pumpjack > Pipe > Small Pump > Tanker > Small Pump > Pipe > Refinery


Ask and thou shalt receive.

Dont forget Vanilla:
Oil Well > Pumpjack > Small Pump > Underground Pipe (repeat many times) > Small Pump > Refinery

barrels are vanilla >.>

Not sure if it's really relevant, but here's my observation/opinion on capacity:
My last serious game was using RSO, but otherwise Vanilla, and I was almost always bringing in a wagon half full of oil every few minutes. Would have been more, but I had the slots locked down to 50/50 to ensure that each of the outposts on the stop could also take empty barrels if they had used all of their buffer.
Even the stops with only dry wells (with speed 1s or 2s, some with a beacon with speed 1s or 2s as well) would still make enough to fill a slot or more every ~3 minutes that it took the train to make the loop.
So I guess I'm saying that if even RSO can completely fill a tanker without extraordinary efforts, then I'm sure Vanilla would benefit from an increased size.
And then there's the consideration that it would make shipping the oil products feasible, as well as making steam engines still viable outside the starting area on maps that use a water only in starting area setting.
To be fair though, I'm not familiar with the actual water flow rate, both from pumps and when at max use in an optimal steam setup. So my last point is probably dismissable.

I've got a positional problem for a train (dual-head) with three tankers:



Train is stopped at a station at the end of the line. (Running automatically.)
The tap for pumping out oil is equidistant from the two pumps and it won't 'connect'. (I can just make the train shorter for now.)

When placing the tap entity is it possible to align it to the grid? (The nearest square? Or maybe increase the connection range?)
The problem didn't occur when the train was oriented vertically (At the pumping station.) but it does when oriented horizontally.

MasterBuilder wrote:Bug report.

Thanks for that, this has been fixed in 0.0.2, which is now int he first post. I've added a second connection right next to the first one so it shouldn't happen. They are close enough together that you should still only be able to make 1 connected but points to the first person getting both to connect.

Rail Tanker don't want to work in my game. Very often pumps don't want connect with tanks, sometimes they start working when I replace them but when next train arrive, they stop. Also that mess with wagons length cause problems (3rd tanker is more or less in the middle between grid).