When to use Nobium pipes?

[Dragony]

Hi

I am a bit unsure about Niobium pipes. They are really shiny, but expensive. While the underground pipe is very long and thus having a huge advantage compared to the metal underground pipe, I am unsure about the normal niobium pipes. When to use it? Does it have advantages? If I go the economic way, I would have to use niobium underground pipes only when needed, but connecting niobium pipes to metal pipes just looks ugly. So I wonder if I should just take it being ugly, or if I should, only for optical reasons, replace ANY pipe with niobium pipes. This actually hurts a bit when I am only jumping 4 tiles...

What is your strategy?

[Blokus]

The only reason to use the regular ones other than aesthetics is because you're making them anyway as ingredients for buildings. Other than that you're basically throwing resources away.

For mods with as much fluid shenanigans going on as Py or AngelBob, I highly recommend https://mods.factorio.com/mod/underground-pipe-pack

[TwentyEighty]

In the grand scheme of things the pipes aren't very expensive and aesthetics can be important depending on the person. Sure it's expensive when you're running your first niobium plates off the line but even if you make every single pipe out of niobium it's sort of a drop in the bucket

[immortal_sniper1]

they have much better flow rates

[Blokus]

My impression from when Bob pipes had different sizes was that there isn't really a parameter for pipes that you can change to meaningfully alter flow rates.

[TwentyEighty]

Niobium pipes used to carry more liquid per section, but that actually reduced flow rate because factorio. So now it's the same.

[alercah]

Also because physics---a wider pipe will move liquid slower at the same pressure even in real life.

[Blokus]

Also because physics---a wider pipe will move liquid slower at the same pressure even in real life.

At the same pressure, yes; the basic issue is that there isn't really a way to make the "pressure" high enough to get an increase in flow rate from the wider pipe. Factorio's fluid mechanics doesn't really make sense.

[TwentyEighty]

We're not caring about fluid velocity we're caring about throughout and a wider pipe shouldn't reduce throughout but it does in factorio

[Riktol]

The problem I have with niobium pipes is that they take longer to deconstruct than normal pipes. This makes them irritating to work with. In terms of material efficiency the underground pipes are absolutely top tier, 6 plates to go cross 30 tiles whereas the iron underground pipes take 15 plates to go 10.
Also it might be a bug but niobium underground pipes hold 400 fluid but the normal niobium pipes hold 100.

[alercah]

We're not caring about fluid velocity we're caring about throughout and a wider pipe shouldn't reduce throughout but it does in factorio

Yeah, the fluid dynamics are weird and I hope that they get improved in the next version!

[Riktol]

We're not caring about fluid velocity we're caring about throughout and a wider pipe shouldn't reduce throughout but it does in factorio

Does that mean that running water from distant lakes via niobium pipes will give me less water than using iron pipes?

[alercah]

No, because the volumes of all the pipe types are the same for this reason. You'll actually currently get better throughput when working with pipes that have longer underground segments, because the underground pipe section counts as only two segments, so you get less total pipe volume.

[Crixomix]

But do niobium pipes hold 400 or 100? A guy above said 400 and if that's true, then that would make long sections of undergrounds slower than iron because of the increased capacity per pipe, which, as discussed, slows flow.

[Riktol]

But do niobium pipes hold 400 or 100? A guy above said 400 and if that's true, then that would make long sections of undergrounds slower than iron because of the increased capacity per pipe, which, as discussed, slows flow.

In the version I'm using the niobium pipes hold 100 but the niobium undergrounds hold 400. I can't say I understand the mechanics of why a larger pipe would make lower throughput but you can always ask Pyanodon to change it.

[kingarthur]

But do niobium pipes hold 400 or 100? A guy above said 400 and if that's true, then that would make long sections of undergrounds slower than iron because of the increased capacity per pipe, which, as discussed, slows flow.

In the version I'm using the niobium pipes hold 100 but the niobium undergrounds hold 400. I can't say I understand the mechanics of why a larger pipe would make lower throughput but you can always ask Pyanodon to change it.

the way ive understood it is factorios pipes are like a line of buckets as each fills it spills over into the next. as for way larger makes it slower is that it only transfer a portion of the fluid each tick based on how full and how much the other pipe has in it.

for example if you have 2 pipes next to each other named pipe a and pipe b.

if pipe a is size 100 and has 100 fluid in its full. if pipe b is empty it will transfer vary fast.

now if pipe is size 400 and has 100 fluid its only 25% full and will transfer less fluid into pipe b per tick slowing down how fast the fluid will transfer along a pipe section.

you get the same effect with storage tanks as they are really just very large pipes and why you usually need a pump to create "suction" to get good flow out of them

[Riktol]

But do niobium pipes hold 400 or 100? A guy above said 400 and if that's true, then that would make long sections of undergrounds slower than iron because of the increased capacity per pipe, which, as discussed, slows flow.

In the version I'm using the niobium pipes hold 100 but the niobium undergrounds hold 400. I can't say I understand the mechanics of why a larger pipe would make lower throughput but you can always ask Pyanodon to change it.

the way ive understood it is factorios pipes are like a line of buckets as each fills it spills over into the next. as for way larger makes it slower is that it only transfer a portion of the fluid each tick based on how full and how much the other pipe has in it.

for example if you have 2 pipes next to each other named pipe a and pipe b.

if pipe a is size 100 and has 100 fluid in its full. if pipe b is empty it will transfer vary fast.

now if pipe is size 400 and has 100 fluid its only 25% full and will transfer less fluid into pipe b per tick slowing down how fast the fluid will transfer along a pipe section.

you get the same effect with storage tanks as they are really just very large pipes and why you usually need a pump to create "suction" to get good flow out of them

Does that mean that a pipe which starts full will transfer liquid more quickly than a pipe which starts empty?

[kingarthur]

But do niobium pipes hold 400 or 100? A guy above said 400 and if that's true, then that would make long sections of undergrounds slower than iron because of the increased capacity per pipe, which, as discussed, slows flow.

In the version I'm using the niobium pipes hold 100 but the niobium undergrounds hold 400. I can't say I understand the mechanics of why a larger pipe would make lower throughput but you can always ask Pyanodon to change it.

the way ive understood it is factorios pipes are like a line of buckets as each fills it spills over into the next. as for way larger makes it slower is that it only transfer a portion of the fluid each tick based on how full and how much the other pipe has in it.

for example if you have 2 pipes next to each other named pipe a and pipe b.

if pipe a is size 100 and has 100 fluid in its full. if pipe b is empty it will transfer vary fast.

now if pipe is size 400 and has 100 fluid its only 25% full and will transfer less fluid into pipe b per tick slowing down how fast the fluid will transfer along a pipe section.

you get the same effect with storage tanks as they are really just very large pipes and why you usually need a pump to create "suction" to get good flow out of them

Does that mean that a pipe which starts full will transfer liquid more quickly than a pipe which starts empty?

fastest possible transfer is from a full pipe to an empty pipe. the bigger the difference between 2 pipes the larger the transfer will be

[BlueTemplar]

Bigger pipes should make for bigger maximum throughput, but you'll need to have more frequent pumps to keep it up.
(Note that if i'm not mistaken, you're probably quickly going to be limited by vanilla pump's fluidbox size itself, which is only 200 L...)