Fluid categories
Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 7:35 am
Some mods could benefit from categorizing fluids like it's done for fuel items at the moment.
Fluid fuels:
Fluid energy sources currently only support to either use a single fluid using a filter on the fluid box or all fluids with fuel value using no filter. There is no way to make Mk2 buildings require "Mk2" fluids or have totally different kind of energetic fluids.
Restrictions on pipes/tanks:
The Industrial Revolution mod has early pipes that can only transport water or steam. I love that concept. But once you have access to general-purpose pipes there are no restrictions anymore. There are so many possibilities for mods to make the game more interesting. You could make players build special rail wagons to transport molten metals. Or prevent piping of hot air and require direct "insertion" for it. Or require special thermo-insulated pipes for heating/cooling fluids. This might not be everyone's dream, but for mods striving for realism this would be such a blast.
Also some mods abuse the fluid system for mechanisms that aren't strictly fluids, like fluidic power. These could separate their entities a lot cleaner from normal fluids if they could add filters for more than a single fluid.
I believe both of these ideas could be solved by extending the fluid box filters. You could put fluids into categories similar to the fuel category of items. The fluid box filters would not only allow a single prototype, but instead/alternatively a list of supported categories.
I know this is not supported by the game engine at the moment, but I also do not suppose to add such a mechanic to the vanilla game, therefore I have put this request into the modding area. Feel free to move it. Performance-wise I believe this could be implemented on a pay-per-use basis. If not using category restrictions there shouldn't be any extra checks during fluid calculations.
Fluid fuels:
Fluid energy sources currently only support to either use a single fluid using a filter on the fluid box or all fluids with fuel value using no filter. There is no way to make Mk2 buildings require "Mk2" fluids or have totally different kind of energetic fluids.
Restrictions on pipes/tanks:
The Industrial Revolution mod has early pipes that can only transport water or steam. I love that concept. But once you have access to general-purpose pipes there are no restrictions anymore. There are so many possibilities for mods to make the game more interesting. You could make players build special rail wagons to transport molten metals. Or prevent piping of hot air and require direct "insertion" for it. Or require special thermo-insulated pipes for heating/cooling fluids. This might not be everyone's dream, but for mods striving for realism this would be such a blast.
Also some mods abuse the fluid system for mechanisms that aren't strictly fluids, like fluidic power. These could separate their entities a lot cleaner from normal fluids if they could add filters for more than a single fluid.
I believe both of these ideas could be solved by extending the fluid box filters. You could put fluids into categories similar to the fuel category of items. The fluid box filters would not only allow a single prototype, but instead/alternatively a list of supported categories.
I know this is not supported by the game engine at the moment, but I also do not suppose to add such a mechanic to the vanilla game, therefore I have put this request into the modding area. Feel free to move it. Performance-wise I believe this could be implemented on a pay-per-use basis. If not using category restrictions there shouldn't be any extra checks during fluid calculations.
