Factorio Forums

Please fix the fluid mechanics. Right now it is not possible to precisely calculate how fast a fluid is travelling because on the official wiki no such information is given. Please cleanup this important and huge mechanic of the game, make it clear and reliable.

The devs are working on it, please wait.

I am glad to hear this!

any update on this? trying to better understand how fluid work

Horus773 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:46 pm any update on this?

No, if there is new information it will come in form of an official statement or in the changelog of a new release. See: 678

Horus773 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:46 pm any update on this? trying to better understand how fluid work

No, and this is really unfortunate.

Horus773 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:46 pm any update on this? trying to better understand how fluid work

Just FYI, at this moment new fluid system got cancelled - viewtopic.php?p=475106#p475106 - so it seems we are stuck with the current one.

Pipes and fluids transfer at up to 1200 units per second, and pipes average the amount they have per tick, but direct tank connections flow seemingly based on amount (not "percent"), up to 1200/second per connection (they can connect on each side, in each corner, for a total of 8 connections) Edit: I forgot they normally have connections only in opposing corners, and it depends on rotation (flip). 4 connections. Machines seem to fill like pipes, so if a collection of tanks are stealing all the fluid, the pipes may be at a small percent and not fill machines quickly. Pumps act like a virtual 0 at their back end, and a virtual 100/maximum at their front (and are one-way and circuit connectable).

Pipes have terrible transfer rate fall-off and distance issues depending on the fluid. Nuclear reactor people (including me) can tell you all about it. Trying to push 1200 water or steam per second becomes a challenge - heat exchangers tend to go up to around 10-12 before the pipes start "clogging" and you end up with weird stuff like 100 in an exchanger and 0 in the pipes near it.

I'm fine with throughput degradation, for me major issue is an unpredictable behavior. 100% simmetrical design doesn't result in even split, 2 pumps connected to one pipe do not divide fluid equally, pump connected in the middle of a long pipe doesn't grab entire flow, etc.
And yes, forced pipes connection in vanilla is terrible.

[Koub] Implemented in 2.0 yay \o/ :
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-416

les go