Factorio Forums

With certain buildings (currently i was only able to reproduce the bug with modded buildings) in a simplest case of one producer and two consumers of a fluid and a single pipe network connecting them, one of the consumers (depending on the order they were built) gets all of the fluid while the other gets none.
If one of the consumers backs up with the input fluid, the other consumer starts consuming the fluid normally.
The amount of fluid produced and consumed is integer and on the order of several dozen units, which means it is probably not related to rounding errors.

Reproduction steps:
- Install mod pycoalprocessing
- Start a new game (freeplay/sandbox/testing)
- Paste and build the following blueprint: Copy blueprint
- Unlock the required technologies (research or /cheat)
- Observe as only one of the consumers consumes all of the fluid while the other gets none

The attached save file includes two pumps, each feeding one of the consumers, but the behavior persists with the pumps removed, and even when each consumer is fed by a separate pipe connection on the producing machine.

The fluid is being produced in batches of 80 and consumed in batches of 150 or 100. It's nowhere near enough to satisfy both machines at full rate. I don't know that the fluid system was designed to guarantee even distribution in that situation. It does seem to be counter to the stated goal of the new fluid system that build order would not impact performance anymore. You could of course force manual balancing by letting the fluid build up in a tank until there was enough to supply a burst to both machines through a circuit-controlled pump. You won't notice this behavior if either of the consuming machines backs up at its output and you have enough input for the actual production rate.

Thanks for the report however you're using pumps. The first pump that updates will extract as much fluid as it can and leave the pipe empty. Just don't use pumps if you want semi-even distribution.

Rseding91 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 02, 2024 1:06 am Thanks for the report however you're using pumps. The first pump that updates will extract as much fluid as it can and leave the pipe empty. Just don't use pumps if you want semi-even distribution.

If you remove the pumps, the result is the same. The lower machine gets 0 fluid until the upper machine stops using it.

EDIT: In this test save with no pumps and vanilla machines, the assemblers do share the fluid input evenly. That's very interesting.

Rseding91 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 02, 2024 1:06 am Thanks for the report however you're using pumps. The first pump that updates will extract as much fluid as it can and leave the pipe empty. Just don't use pumps if you want semi-even distribution.

Sorry, i was doing some more testing and forgot to remove the pumps. The same behaviour persists without pumps.