Mixed fluids in electromagnetic plant setup

[Vurth]

I have a working fluid line with Holmium Solution, but there is a small amount of Electrolyte in it somewhere. I have deleted the line multiple times and rebuilt it, but there is always a small amount of Electrolyte after some time. It doesn't seem to be there at the beginning. When I rebuild it, it runs fine while I build up a small reserve of Holmium Solution in the tank and I can connect it to the EM Plants. Once the EM Plants use all of the HS, the line then becomes entirely Electrolyte spread throughout. Once this happens, I can no longer create HS and pump it into the line.

[Loewchen]

Post the save please, see 3638.

[Mekelius]

I also ran into this. I think the EM-lab sometimes leaks fluids through it into inputs taking the other fluid and that pollutes the other fluid section. Might be something more funky than that, since de- and reconstructing everything sometimes doesn't fix it. Save attached. It's on fulgora, check the lab that makes the science packs. The save has a workaround tank in place, but before I built it the electrolyte fluid consistently leaked through. This was on 2.0.11, haven't played after updating to .13 yet.

[Human44]

Hi,

II have got a similar problem on Fulgura with Holmium and Electrolyte Fluids.
At the beginning, 5 chemicals plants produce Holmium solution and 3 others produce Electrolyte (see screenshots) and it works like it should. After a while (2-3 min), it stops working when suddenly Holmium solution turns to Electrolyte in the pipes.

I can deconstruct and reconstruct the pipes but it will finally stop working again a few minutes later... I did it several times :/

[brunnerj]

We also had this same problem with mixing of these fluids in a fluid system connected to an EM plant. Ours involved a single pipe between two EM plants, which should have been electrolyte but occasionally became holmium solution. The electrolyte system usually had 0 total electrolyte in it; I assume this bug can't happen if the EM plant input always has a positive amount of the correct fluid present.

[Loewchen]

What is missing is an actual procedure to create the issue in the first place. All what has been presented so far could have been caused by an accidental rotation or something similar.

[Human44]

What is missing is an actual procedure to create the issue in the first place. All what has been presented so far could have been caused by an accidental rotation or something similar.

Sorry but, what do you mean by "accidental rotation" ? Rotation of the electromagnetic plant ? I'm pretty sure it didn't happen and I rebuilt the whole pipes setup multiple times. Same issue each time: working well at the beginning then going wrong with no reason after a while :/

[kegan@keganmyers.com]

I'm having the same issue with the EM plant. Not sure how I got into the situation, I think my holmium ran out and the EM plant just started spitting out heavy oil from the holmium port for some reason. In the attached save if you place a pipe on the holmium I/O port, it will be filled with heavy oil. The plant has not been rotated AFAIK. In general I would never expect a port labeled with a certain fluid to ever input or output any other fluid.

Screenshot from 2024-11-02 16-05-43.png (1.24 MiB) Viewed 2263 times

Screenshot from 2024-11-02 16-05-56.png (1.22 MiB) Viewed 2263 times

I am running a few mods, but those should all be simple QoL (Bottleneck Lite, Bullet Trails, Disco Science, Helmod, Rate Calculator). I reloaded the save without those mods and was still able to reproduce.

[DayNife]

I'm getting the same issue.

[Zaflis]

I also ran into this. I think the EM-lab sometimes leaks fluids through it into inputs taking the other fluid and that pollutes the other fluid section.

You can consider electromagnetic plant is just another pipe segment too. If you want to clean pipes you need to clean the plant too by removing and replacing it. It doesn't have any pure inputs, all pipe connections are both in and out. This is same with platform thrusters, steam turbines etc. But all these machines have a fluid buffer inside. When you remove 1 pipe, no fluid is actually lost in the "pipeline" as long as there is some space for the fluid in any of its segments.

[The_Sane]

Possibly the same issue as this, so not exclusive to EM plants: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=119600

See that thread for details and saves that will reproduce the issue. A version change in the game seemingly allows one pipeline to leak through a machine into another connected pipe.

[enviplaysgames]

I just ran into this too!
Have completely rebuilt the pipes, have pumped everything out. disconnected everything and rebuilt it.
The heavy oil connection actually also got contaminated and the pipes turned into holmium. I tore it all out and rebuilt it and it stayed heavy oil.
If i leave the heavy oil connected & take away the holmium input pipe -- and then place a tank/pipe in the electrolyte output, it actually turns into heavy oil, interestingly. still not electrolyte though.

11-04-2024, 02-34-03.png (2.82 MiB) Viewed 2119 times

[The_Sane]

Please reconsider filing this as "not a bug". There most certainly is an issue with fluids leaking between pipelines. See thread I linked earlier.

There are duplicates of the issue still open covering this so closing this one isn't the end of the world, but I disagree that it's "not a bug".

[Loewchen]

There most certainly is an issue with fluids leaking between pipelines.

If you can show such an issue and method to reproduce it let us know, everything else is just noise.

[kegan@keganmyers.com]

There most certainly is an issue with fluids leaking between pipelines.

If you can show such an issue and method to reproduce it let us know, everything else is just noise.

I think there are two issues at play here:

1. The EM factory ports are rotationally symmetrical and it rotates in 90 degree increments

The EM plant is likely the first such factory players will encounter, and as far as I remember the base game didn't have any such factories. You can't meaningfully rotate e.g. a boiler or steam engine. The two electrolyte bidi ports act as a pipe segment, which will inadvertently connect the two inputs if you need to rotate the factory, which can easily happen if you're just starting with the EM plant. Doing so also fills that bidi port with the wrong fluid which is extra confusing (in one or two rotations you can fill all attached pipes if only one of the pipes has fluid in it).

2. Bidirectional fluid ports are unintuitive.

I've never noticed this before because very few buildings even had bidi ports, but the bidi port works in a very confusing way. It may be "just a pipe segment", but the fact is that it behaves oddly. In alt mode it is always labeled with a fluid even if empty. It can accept any fluid, despite being labeled for a certain fluid. There is nothing to indicate what fluid a bidi port contains when looking at the building. There is no way to clear the fluid from the bidi port when looking at a building. There is nothing to indicate that there is even fluid "in" a building with a bidi port if there aren't pipes attached to it. Deleting a pipe attached to a bidi port forces fluid into the building.

This may not be a bug, but it sure quacks like one at first glance.

[enviplaysgames]

Just to add my experience, I had my EM factory set up previously & it was working and creating electrolyte. I've made many electrolyte products already. At some point, both the electrolyte and heavy oil pipes turned into holmium so it stopped working. I disconnected all of the pipes, deleted the EM factory, placed it back down, rotated to be where it needed to be, and then reconnected the pipes. It still deems the output to be holmium (therefore the electrolyte has nowhere to go).

I really think it's more than just not knowing how to rotate a factory before plugging the pipes in. Though, I'm not entirely closed to the possibility of it being user error either, haha ^^'

Could someone explain to me what's needed to "show the issue" and an example of a "method to reproduce it" ? I'm not sure I understand. I've played factorio for 6 years but this is my first time in the forums. I'd like to be helpful in trying to get help for this. Thanks!

[Zaflis]

Could someone explain to me what's needed to "show the issue" and an example of a "method to reproduce it" ? I'm not sure I understand. I've played factorio for 6 years but this is my first time in the forums. I'd like to be helpful in trying to get help for this. Thanks!

You'll just need to describe exactly how to reproduce the issue from scratch. Maybe with pictures it's easier than words.

But also we may have seen a reproducible case of a migration from patch 2.0.11 to 2.0.14 (or slightly before too) where the fluids were contaminated after loading with a different game version only. But as mentioned before you can fix the pipes by flushing them. A migration bug would be a one-off thing.

[BlueTemplar]

Great analysis of the likely confusion by kegan !
(And yeah, some of these might be also from migration bugs...)

You can consider electromagnetic plant is just another pipe segment too. If you want to clean pipes you need to clean the plant too by removing and replacing it. It doesn't have any pure inputs, all pipe connections are both in and out. This is same with platform thrusters, steam turbines etc. But all these machines have a fluid buffer inside. When you remove 1 pipe, no fluid is actually lost in the "pipeline" as long as there is some space for the fluid in any of its segments.

A much more certain way is to click on the pipe and then flush all the pipeline :

pipeline_contents.png (465.15 KiB) Viewed 1991 times

(Fluid pipeline sharing deliberately created here by rotating the nearby plant 4 times.)
However, it isn't obvious to new players that you can even click on the pipes themselves,
so maybe this dialog should also be shown on the bottom of machines with fluidboxes ?

[enviplaysgames]

A much more certain way is to click on the pipe and then flush all the pipeline :
pipeline_contents.png
(Fluid pipeline sharing deliberately created here by rotating the nearby plant 4 times.)
However, it isn't obvious to new players that you can even click on the pipes themselves,
so maybe this dialog should also be shown on the bottom of machines with fluidboxes ?

Okay, I did not know you could flush it like that! That totally fixes my issue. Thank you so much Y'all have been so patient and helpful.
I love space age & there's so much to learn!

[AmenoS]

There most certainly is an issue with fluids leaking between pipelines.

If you can show such an issue and method to reproduce it let us know, everything else is just noise.

I think there are two issues at play here:

1. The EM factory ports are rotationally symmetrical and it rotates in 90 degree increments

The EM plant is likely the first such factory players will encounter, and as far as I remember the base game didn't have any such factories. You can't meaningfully rotate e.g. a boiler or steam engine. The two electrolyte bidi ports act as a pipe segment, which will inadvertently connect the two inputs if you need to rotate the factory, which can easily happen if you're just starting with the EM plant. Doing so also fills that bidi port with the wrong fluid which is extra confusing (in one or two rotations you can fill all attached pipes if only one of the pipes has fluid in it).

2. Bidirectional fluid ports are unintuitive.

I've never noticed this before because very few buildings even had bidi ports, but the bidi port works in a very confusing way. It may be "just a pipe segment", but the fact is that it behaves oddly. In alt mode it is always labeled with a fluid even if empty. It can accept any fluid, despite being labeled for a certain fluid. There is nothing to indicate what fluid a bidi port contains when looking at the building. There is no way to clear the fluid from the bidi port when looking at a building. There is nothing to indicate that there is even fluid "in" a building with a bidi port if there aren't pipes attached to it. Deleting a pipe attached to a bidi port forces fluid into the building.

This may not be a bug, but it sure quacks like one at first glance.

What about this?