Factorio Forums

Hi!

So i'm not sure but I think I found a bug on the way storage tank pressurize, thanks to my large nuclear build
I'm sorry for my presentation with paint, I've had no other way to explain (see image in attachment)

So let's try to explain:
- Blue Arrow is my current build not working as intended: Pump in orange arrow is pushing in fluid to the left side, then there is 20 storages tanks back to back, then Pump in green arrow is pushing out fluid to the left side to 20 Steam Engine. As you can see nearly half my steam engine is working du to no pressure
- Yellow Arrow is my temporary fix to try to investigate what's wrong. In red Arrow I put no more than 1 storage tank back to back so i fill with pump to see if that work. And it did!!! as you can see all my steam engine is working.

I couldn't know why Blue doesn't work and Yellow is until i've seen that the storage tank on green Arrow is empty and the more to the right storage tank i go the more it is fill until Orange Arrow storage tank is full!!! So Fluid that is pumping left to right with good directionnal pressure with pump on both in and out is filling storage right to left!!!

Please can you confirm me this is a bug so that i can wait on a fix and not redo the whole 72 nuclear reactor build

Thanks again for this incredible game,

Freeman

https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system

If you consider storage tanks to be just pipe segments, then you have 20 pipe long connection between pump near orange arrow and pump near green arrow. This will limit maximum flow through storage tanks. With storage tanks this values may be even lower because of increased volume (25000 instead of 100). FFF-274

Measured flow through 20 storage tanks: 308 u/s. Even if flow would be as fast as through pipes, you would get up to 1169u/s (measured 1128) that would be not enough for 20 steam turbines that require 1200 u/s

You can fix this by adding parallel undeground pipe line connecting first with 20-th storage tank, this will help a lot (for now, undeground pipe pair count as 2 segments). Most likely this will be "not a bug" (player put too much buffers) or "wont fix" (we are implementing new fluid system or something)

I am no expert in nuclear builds but I am quite sure it is not a bug. I remember that nuclear builds require some well placed pumps to work optimally so this is to be expected.

Well thanks guys for your answer!

I know the ratio well for nuclear well enough, I've plenty of Heat exchanger for a 20 steam turbine line so I rather not complexify the build by adding parallel pipe.
So I change my build to add pump between each tank, that way my last tank is always the one with pressure, which was what I wanted in the beginning. And it work fine

Thanks again!