Friday Facts #416 - Fluids 2.0

[Neutronium]

Not sure if I'm the biggest fan of the implementation, but what I am happy about is it helps with UPS, and since my main goal on SA is to go big, this will help in achieving that goal to its fullest.

[ombus]

If we dont have to send liquids to other planets then i guess the barrel has even less of a place ? xD

[Tertius]

I'm probably one of the few who doesn't have an issue with the 1.1 fluid system. It worked well if handled well and its quirks were challenges, not issues.
However, I acknowledge there are limits you hit with very high throughput. I solved these by overproduction and multiple pipes in parallel, but the 2.0 design seems to aim in general for higher speed and throughput per machine in every late(r) game phase. So if 2.0 playtesting shows the 1.1 system is simply insufficient, I trust that a different, albeit less realistic behavior is the better choice for the game in general.

I guess I will hardly notice the difference, because the 1.1 system also just works up to medium throughput. If I reach a later game phase where there is a notable difference, I will probably notice throughput is kept up and I don't need to insert pumps or parallel pipes for now, then never think about that again.

[GregoriusT]

If we dont have to send liquids to other planets then i guess the barrel has even less of a place ? xD

I would guess one would send a few Barrels of Lubricant to Planets so you can make Electric Motors and Stuff right away. maybe a bit of Sulfuric Acid for Vulcanus Mining Operations and Batteries.

Water on the other hand can be gotten from Spaaaaaaace, so that one doesn't need to be barrelled.

[gaelyte]

I'm surprised people are ready to stop playing just because a single of the challenges that was fighting against a weird-behaving fluid system was removed

[GrandMasterB]

As an engineer and simulation specialist for thermal systems, I am sad about this change. From my point of view, the fluid system, as bad as it may be, was/is the only part of the game that actually deals with engineering tasks. The rest of the game only creates logistical problems. Even if only very few people actually implement just-in-time mechanisms or other real logistical solutions. Most of the people only buffer huge amounts of resources and intermediate products, the opposite of the just-in-time concept. Proportional-integral-controllers are also a rarity used concept. Only produce needed intermediate products is also rarity used concepts.

It makes me all the more sad that this one game mechanic is not being improved or fixed, but simply simplified. I would like to help you to realize a simplified but realistic implementation of the fluid systems.To do this, you can merge longer segments to increase performance. The dynamic pressure can be neglected here. Static pressure, however, offers a simple way of representing reality without becoming too complex. Pumps can also be greatly simplified. But it requires a static pressure at each element input and output. At each tick, the elements could calculate the mass flow independently of other elements. While pumps would only represent a fixed pressure difference.So independent of the pressure level or the pressure difference between input and output.

After the quality feature, which adds non-physically explainable effects to products in an imaginary way, because of the not clearly defined quality, this would be the second step backwards in the direction of the causal game.

[Sphinx]

I have never dealt with the fluid system. If the throughput was too low, I simply put pumps in between. Either that fixed it or I dismissed it as a bug that it wasn't working properly. I've never looked at the wiki to see how it works, but I've often wondered why not enough is arriving.

It's also not teleporting per se. If you have a 1000 block long line. This segment can lets say hold 100,000 liters. And you only pump in 10l/sec, then it comes out directly at the end. But let's say you only get 0,01% (depends on the used ratio) of the 10 you pumped in. But it's so little that it doesn't really do much good.

So for me this is a great change. It's more intuitive and makes me despair far less often because something doesn't work as expected.

[Tertius]

I'm surprised people are ready to stop playing just because a single of the challenges that was fighting against a weird-behaving fluid system was removed

There's always a tradeoff. 1% leave if some game mechanic changes, but 10% leave if the mechanics stays the same. So it's better for the game to make the 10% not leave by updating an inferior game mechanics instead of keeping the 1% who reject changes by not changing anything.

A common complaint for game mechanic updates is that it's "dumbing down" the game, but I don't see this in Factorio 2.0. For everything that's made slightly more accessible, there is also some added mechanic that's increasing choice and depth.

[adam_bise]

I agree with the changes.

The system has to be considered as a whole. The whole system needs to be reliable and scalable first. Only then could realism aspects even be considered.

This fluid system is reliable and scalable. Even if realism changes do not follow, at least the actual fluid problems are solved. Plus, now we can take a stab at fluid calculations.

[CyberCider]

I would guess one would send a few Barrels of Lubricant to Planets so you can make Electric Motors and Stuff right away. maybe a bit of Sulfuric Acid for Vulcanus Mining Operations and Batteries.

Water on the other hand can be gotten from Spaaaaaaace, so that one doesn't need to be barrelled.

Unfortunate choice of example, Vulcanus is the planet with sulfuric acid flowing out of the ground

[Agamemnon]

The correct solution (for this use case) has arrived. Finally.

[Panzerknacker]

It's realistic that pipeline length decreases throughput, that's how it works in reality because the longer the pipe the more resistance it imposes. You simply need more paralel pipelines if you require high throughput over a long distance. Or you must produce solid products locally near a oil source and transport them by train.

Being able to teleport a basically infinite amount of liquid over any distance (as long as supply > demand) is utter nonsense.

Isnt it possible to keep the old system and just change that at an intersection, fluid spreads to both directions depending on the fill percentage?

[akaszynski]

Between the two solutions, "somewhat realistic, buggy, unpredictable" vs. "not realistic but predictable and fast", I'd prefer the latter. However, I think you can do better:

Why not compute the total flow at "build" time based on the heat equation, approximated by a radial basis function where the inputs are the distance along a "segment". This becomes the weights for both the input and consumption and effectively scales the entire fluid in the pipe based on a "simple" linear equation. This is between the 1.0 and 2.0 approach as fluid won't necessarily flow as in the current 1.0 configuration, but it also will start to drop off based on the distance from "emitters".

[Mycroft4114]

It seems much of the objection to the new system is the fact that it makes long distance pipes a thing. More of a thing, anyway. You can already build long pipelines using intermediate pumps. I've done it myself to get an initial oil field up before I'm fully on trains. The new system just removes the need for the pumps. This may help new players past that initial oil stumbling block. But it also takes time and resources to build, and adds the problem of: now I need to build something new, and there's a big pipeline in the way.

We often tell people here that there's no wrong way to play the game. If people want to use giant pipelines - let them. Maybe they like big pipelines. For most of us veterans, the train will be the simple and obvious solution that we will continue to use. The majority of everyone's piping will be the smaller, local pipes within the production area, and this change means those will work in a more consistent way, especially for the higher volume/speed systems we are going to be building with the expansion mechanics. If the tradeoff for the small, complicated stuff that you build a lot of working better is that the long pipes get simpler, ok. That's before we get into the presumed UPS gains of the new system. (By the way, someone go wake up the megabasers. I think they fainted.)

Also, this comment from ledow:

I realise that it's hard work, but the old system needs to be kept if this is the alternative. It adds nothing and takes away a huge aspect of the game, and makes fluids become "just connect this wire and it all works" which removes huge tracts of the fun. Completely destroys barrelling as well - what's the point when you can instantaneously transport all fluids everywhere? I can even see someone make a single long pipeline to a remote station and "schedule" the pipes with circuits to transfer every fluid product into a storage tank, switching using circuits as to what the current fluid is to pump, and what tank it's put into at the end. One pipe, eliminates the entire fluid, barrelling and train transport of fluids in one hit.

I just find the complaint: "It takes away the challenge of tossing a couple of trains at the problem if you can just build a simple circuit-controlled time division fluid multiplexer!" highly amusing. Never change, Engineers! Never take the simple solution when a contraption will do!

[atynublo]

it would be cool to add such an opportunity to paint pipes of different colors, and make sure that they do not connect when you make a line from different liquids

[Sphinx]

It's realistic that pipeline length decreases throughput, that's how it works in reality because the longer the pipe the more resistance it imposes. You simply need more paralel pipelines if you require high throughput over a long distance. Or you must produce solid products locally near a oil source and transport them by train.

Being able to teleport a basically infinite amount of liquid over any distance (as long as supply > demand) is utter nonsense.

Isnt it possible to keep the old system and just change that at an intersection, fluid spreads to both directions depending on the fill percentage?

only when the tube is completely filled is it a 100% teleportation. You can extract a percentage of the filling per second.
Let's say a machine can suck in 5l/sec. But the pipe is only 20% full because it is very long. Then your machine only gets 1l/sec.
But the ratio could also be different, the less filled the less she could suck in. So instead of 1/5 at 20% only 1/10 at 20% filling or even more extreme.

[Lucus]

So I was disappointed by the loss of realism so I spent the afternoon implementing the main loop of an algorithm that should allow efficient and realistic fluid flow with much better control over the speed decay caused by distance. It also does not depend on the build order of the entities.

Code is here: https://gist.github.com/Lucus16/5c94522 ... 59db5b0582

@Wube I don't expect you'd be interested since you've already implemented the other system, but if you want to know more, you can PM me or comment on the gist or something.

[Cehash]

I honestly don't understand the backlash around the new pipe sim. The simulation was not realistic to begin with, unless if your concept of a fluid is akin to molasses. Moreover, it was frustrating to work with and for a part of the game that I would rather see less than more. I believe that if we're making challenges out of inconvenient and unreliable jank then we're not tackling the right problems.

Kudos on the change!

[CheeseMcBurger]

Fun over realism

It wasn't realistic before. In my opinion, we went from broken to fun. The new system looks promising and I am very curious to see how the new systems looks like without pumps. Could you please share a video of that?

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sy ... -after.mp4

[Panzerknacker]

It's realistic that pipeline length decreases throughput, that's how it works in reality because the longer the pipe the more resistance it imposes. You simply need more paralel pipelines if you require high throughput over a long distance. Or you must produce solid products locally near a oil source and transport them by train.

Being able to teleport a basically infinite amount of liquid over any distance (as long as supply > demand) is utter nonsense.

Isnt it possible to keep the old system and just change that at an intersection, fluid spreads to both directions depending on the fill percentage?

only when the tube is completely filled is it a 100% teleportation. You can extract a percentage of the filling per second.
Let's say a machine can suck in 5l/sec. But the pipe is only 20% full because it is very long. Then your machine only gets 1l/sec.
But the ratio could also be different, the less filled the less she could suck in. So instead of 1/5 at 20% only 1/10 at 20% filling or even more extreme.

What I am saying, is "as long as supply > demand". In that case, the pipeline is eventually going to fill up to 100% which will eventually ALWAYS enable the teleporting/infinite flowrate.

I already think belts are overpowered in this game compared to trains because they allow totally free transportation (no fuel cost like trains). Now you can totally ditch the trains, when it comes to fluids.