Factorio Forums

I have two systems which have crude oil, have never had anything else, used to be in the same system, but now I get the error "Cannot connect systems with different fluids" when I try to join them together again. I am not running any mods.

How I got in this situation: I had two crude storage tanks (#1 and #2) next to the refinery, and wanted to eliminate them. I disconnected the oil main from the refinery, added another storage tank (#3) to the north. So I pumped 25k of stored crude into the new tank (#3), and used up the rest in the refinery. Once the old storage tanks (#1 and #2) were mostly empty, I removed them and put another storage tank (#4) closer to the refinery and pumped the crude from #3 to #4, then removed #3. Then I added a pump between #4 and the refinery so #4 won't refill, and tried to reconnect the main, which failed. This is the state of things in the attached file.

I've attached the save file, with my character at the location of the problem. There are two sources of crude oil, one from the north and one from the south. It should be pretty obvious where I'm trying to merge the two systems at the refinery input.

I did a forum search first and found this related post, but it seems to be a slightly different situation, since in my case, the systems were previously a single system shortly before, and have never held any other fluids:

viewtopic.php?p=513220#p513220

One of your refineries north of the train station is rotated incorrectly connecting the output to your crude oil pipe. NaB.

Thank you, I never would have found that, the refinery would have sat there the rest of the game doing nothing. It seems like it should prevent invalid refinery orientations the same way it prevents invalid pipe placements, or at least pop up a warning in such a situation. At least it's much better than the old system where you could mix stuff freely and make a big mess.

linknoid wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:24 pm It seems like it should prevent invalid refinery orientations the same way it prevents invalid pipe placements

It used to. It sucked.

linknoid wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:24 pm At least it's much better than the old system where you could mix stuff freely and make a big mess.

Yes, it is. Between the way it is now and the way it was then, what you want was implemented and many of us really disliked it.

Also, when EVER you get this message with 2 pipes that should contain the same thing, it means one of those pipes does NOT contain what you think it contains. Click the pipe and it'll show you what it contains, and will allow you to flush the bad stuff. Use that as your warning and then check the pipes to find out where that bad fluid came from.

I assume that's what @Loewchen did. It's what I'd have done

Click the pipe and it'll show you what it contains, and will allow you to flush the bad stuff. Use that as your warning and then check the pipes to find out where that bad fluid came from.

I assume that's what @Loewchen did. It's what I'd have done

That's what made it confusing. When you click on either system, it only shows crude as the system contents for both systems. But as long as the refinery had its output pointed at the input, that system is treated as mixed contents, even though it only contains crude. A flashing symbol over the refinery hooked to the wrong fluid system, like you get for disconnected power, would make it much more obvious there is a problem in the first place.