Friday Facts #430 - Drowning in Fluids

[CXZman]

Oh dear...

Every time the devs try to explain something about how pipes work, they show an example, and every time they show an example they overlay a debug visualization tool to show flow and capacity of fluids in pipes so they can explain anything at all.

... and we still don't get such a tool in vanilla. We still don't get a change in pipe tiles to properly show the info at a glance.

We never need those visualization tools for belts, everything ou need to see is right there.
We never need them for electric power network, because it's way over simplified compared to reality, so just seeing cables as lines is enough.
But with pipes, we don't see anything!

I mean if the devs themselves need that tool to understand what's happening and to explain it to people... shouldn't that tool be in the game in the first place? Make the fluid system as complex as you want, but PLEASE consider the massive cue right in front of your eyes: if, as dev, you need such a tool to get it, we PROBABLY also need it!

————

That being said, the alternative is to over simplify fluids so that we never need those visualization tools in the first place. Then comes the problem of having gigantic fluid networks all other the ground. We say it's a problem...

... and yet we still never discuss how doing the same with electricity should ABSOLUTELY be seen as a problem, for the exact same reasons. It is quite unfair and dishonest to argue one without supporting the other.

It's okay to have massive, over simplified, straight forward fluid networks for the exact same reason it's okay to have massive, over simplified, straight forward electricity networks.

Or belt megabuses, for that matter.

[Taipion]

To give you a more practical example,
my 10gw reactor with 64 reactos has 54 lines of heat exchangers, 27 on each side,
I consolidate those (as they are close together anyways) in a 3:1 ratio, using pumps with the pattern of "one pump, one pipe" to transport up to 6k/s in that line,
though you could transport 12k/s if you were to use only pumps and storage tanks.
So I only need to use 9 pipes per side to lead it to my (small, optimized) steam storage, which will still be necessary post expansion, regardless of one being able to read out reactor temperature, as it is much easier and cheaper to store energy as steam in storage tanks instead of storing energy as heat in more heat pipes.
And you still need the capacity, be it in heat or steam, to store a full fueling cycle if you do not want to waste energy.


So this incredibly huge, uncalled for nerf to pump throughput of 10x is a huge nerf to reactor design,
basically forcing everyone from now on to build ugly square reactors. -.-

[Theikkru]

[...]
You missed a bit where it states that steam expands now so you use 1 water to make 10 steam. So overall use of water for reactor stays the same.

[...]
So thanks for making me clear this part as well:
- any halfway sophisticated reactor will have the same amount of offshore pumps as before
- any larger reactor will have 5-10x more pipes for transporting the steam to the turbines, IF you want steam storage over heat storage and/or you do not want your 10gw reactor to look like an ugly square brick

You both got it backwards:

The change doesn't affect the power consumption/output of any machines, they just consume 10x less water to make the same amount of Steam.

[morhp]

I like the changes a lot. The previous design iteration was already a good improvement over the buggy mess that fluids are in the game currently, but I'm confident that the changes will make fluids behave like fluids more and remove the simplicity of just putting super long pipes everywhere. Now you also have to provide electricity for the pumps and handle the slowdown over long sections.

As the others wrote, the 250x250 box is a little strange for tileable blueprints, but I think it could be a good challenge. Either just use generic, stupid 128 or 196 tile long blueprint and waste a little bit of efficiency or alternatively custom-build some design that uses up the 250 exactly but which doesn't fit perfectly into a 64 tile based grid.

Making steam harder to use compared to water makes sense to me, especially as storing steam really feels weird and probably isn't required as much with the new circuit connections for the reactor.

[Taipion]

[...]
You missed a bit where it states that steam expands now so you use 1 water to make 10 steam. So overall use of water for reactor stays the same.

[...]
So thanks for making me clear this part as well:
- any halfway sophisticated reactor will have the same amount of offshore pumps as before
- any larger reactor will have 5-10x more pipes for transporting the steam to the turbines, IF you want steam storage over heat storage and/or you do not want your 10gw reactor to look like an ugly square brick

You both got it backwards:

The change doesn't affect the power consumption/output of any machines, they just consume 10x less water to make the same amount of Steam.

Dude, are you intentionally trolling or just not understanding anything?!?!

- heat exchangers still output the same amount of steam, pre and post expansion release
- after expansion, pumps will be transporting 1/10th of the previous throughput

Read my practical example to get you an idea of why that kills larger nuclear reactor designs.

Thank you


PS:
As people, and you, managed to not read and understand that part already at least 3 times, I'm saying it again:
Pump throughput for water input for nuclear reactors is IRRELEVANT, both now and post expansion, just plug the offshore pumps directly into the heat exchanger lines, you can do that without "water landfills" if you simply build it on a lake.

Which also makes the 10x reduction of water needed IRRELEVANT.

This whole nerf is NOT about water but exclusively about steam.

[Theikkru]

[...]
- heat exchangers still output the same amount of steam, pre and post expansion release
- after expansion, pumps will be transporting 1/10th of the previous throughput
[...]

And you'll need 1/10th the water as compared to before, so 0 change...why do you need so many pumps to move steam around? It's going to be instantaneous under the new system.

[Taipion]

[...]
- heat exchangers still output the same amount of steam, pre and post expansion release
- after expansion, pumps will be transporting 1/10th of the previous throughput
[...]

And you'll need 1/10th the water as compared to before, so 0 change...

[Moderated by Koub : no personal attacks]
you did not read a single line of what I said

[Moderated by Koub : no personal attacks. The fact you don't understand each other doesn't mean that either of you is trolling the other.]


Please explain to me how you can not understand that?!
You still need to transport the SAME AMOUNT of steam, but the pumps have 10X REDUCED THROUGHPUT, so you need 10x (practically 5-10x) more pipes to transport the same amount of steam.

I can't comprehend how one can repeatedly fail to understand this simple thing, yes insists to keep on talking.

[Loewchen]

So is there still no vanilla way of using three pumps on one side of a fluid wagon?

There has never been a vanilla version that did not allow for three pumps to connect to a fluid wagon from one side.

[EustaceCS]

> Pipelines are constrained to a 250x250 tile area

How about taking last step towards realism and introducing proper Water Tower like entity?

You need something intuitive or at least reasonable to justify area of effect constraint of pipe pressure/thoroughput.
You don't need to imitate tower's innards and related infrastructure fully since underground pipes are kinda abstract already and one more "imaginary underground pipe type" won't cause too much of an increase of learning curve for unsuspecting players. In compatison with "no, it's 250*250 and you don't have any control over it unless it's too late".

[adam_bise]

Yall doin me proud now As the resident weirdo who moves water in trains this will help greatly!

viewtopic.php?f=194&t=100714

[thermomug]

Hi, really great news!

The oversimplification of the new fluid system was my biggest concern about the expansion, so I am super happy about todays FFF!
I am also member of the 256x256 club, once as an IT guy and second because you simply cannot stop building chunk-aligned bases once you start. Its some OCD type of thing .

I am especially happy about all the optimizations that players can perform on their fluid systems now. When input- AND output flows are influenced by fullness/emptyness, that means fluid segments can be optimized for either of those.
For maximum throughput for e.g. unloading oil trains, it is necessary to have a low level in the pipes.
For maximum throughput for filling refineries, it is necessary to have a high level in the pipes.
Hence it makes sense to have two separate fluid segments that are connected by pumps. Maybe even a third segment in between, that acts as a buffer/storage.
Finally we can built huge, complex but efficiently optimized fluid distribution/management systems.

By the way, I've already taken two weeks off for my favorite game can hardly wait for it!

Cya

[Taipion]

Fluid lvl effecting fill rate and stuff is basically not much different than how it is now,
so as a cherry on top, if you want to store stuff (not only steam), and you want to make use of storage tanks, you still need to use pumps,
very likely again 2 pumps per tank (one in, one out) or it won't fill and empty properly,

but now you do that 10X slower... gg



...and let's not forget about 10X slower un/loading fluid trains

Again: Who TF thought nerfing pumps by 10X was a good idea??!

[Theikkru]

[...]To me, that artificial 250x250 space limitation sounds, well, artificial and unfun. It may not be constraining, but it sure sounds like it might be annoying when *suddenly* the pipe magically stops working and needs a pump because some weird limit is reached.

I think my biggest issue with it is the binary nature of it. If size exceeds the limit, flow will cease.[...]

[...]But I think the hard cutoff at 250 will make long distance low throughput pipelines (like e.g. for lubricant on the other side of the base) that work fine in 1.1 quite a bit more annoying since you even have to place pumps for those.
If there is a forced fluid segment border at that 250 distance instead, that reduced throughput (like an imaginary slow pump) but did not stop flow completely this would still keep that viable.[...]

[...] I don't really get pipe limit. Why is it area based and not length based?[...]

All of the above, so please do something like this:

[...]Instead of extents with a size of 250x250, have you thought about adjusting the max input/output rate based on the size of a pipe segment[...]

Instead of using a 250*250 bounding box as the limiting factor the number of pipe segments should be the relevant number. It is far more realistic (which I know is not that important in game design) but it being realistic also makes it more intuitive.

Also instead of either 100% or 0%, the output should be a function relative to the number of pipe segments. For example 100% for 1-50 segments and then dropping near 0% at 300 segments.[...]

Just make up a new statistic called "pressure" that's listed in appropriate tooltips and calculated based on the size of the segment in pipe tiles (with undergrounds including their underground lengths and tanks counting for 9 tiles). Then it'll be obvious what's happening anytime you see it's less than 100%, just like with fill ratio.

This part in the FFF confuses me:

Something that I failed to adequately explain before is that while there is no limitation on the total flow through a pipeline in a given tick, there is a hardcoded limit of 100 fluid per flow operation (6000/s). This limit is multiplied with the fullness ratios of the source and sink to produce the actual flow value, and this proportionality is what allows machines to share fluid more evenly.

I was under the impression that it was each machine's nominal fluid rate (e.g. 60/s) that was multiplied by the fill ratio to get the actual fluid flow for that machine. Does this mean that a machine trying to pull 60/s would only start to get limited flow below 1% fill? (60÷6000=1%)

[adam_bise]

256 x 256 please, as everyone here keeps screaming, I will join in on it. Also 254 or 255 would still be acceptable, since the Pump is 2 Tiles long, unless the pump tiles themselves count towards the Limit.

No, the pump is 1 tile wide and I doubt you will need 254 of them.

[mochito]

I think a lot of commenters are conflating realism with good game design and I would argue against that. If I wanted realism, I’d get a job as a process engineer.

I think there are also a lot of misconceptions about how the limitations are implemented, particularly around the idea that the game will tell players where to place pumps. If I read correctly, the game only tells when a network exceeds a certain size. The player is free to subdivide that network however they see fit.

Another topic that I think is getting more oxygen than it deserves is a “gradual falloff” in throughput. The tradeoff that introduces is superficial at best; the vast majority of players will still choose to place pumps at the interval which maximizes throughput. And the savings for placing fewer pumps is… a few pumps? Pumps are cheap, both in resources and design impact.

What is missing but which I would like to see is Quality of pipes influencing the maximum network size. Maybe we have something like the average quality of the pipes in the network apply some multiplier to the bounding box size. Or instead of using a bounding box, the network cost is calculated by the number of pipe elements, and higher quality pipe elements incur a lower cost against that limit. I propose this because it provides another way for Quality progression to influence megabase topology/layout (as opposed to just subbing in better entities).

I do enjoy the challenge of incredibly thirsty nuclear reactors. Providing sufficient water to the center of a high output nuclear plant was an interesting logistical challenge in both the base game and Space Exploration (with condenser designs). This reduction in water requirements along with the introduction of circuit signals looks like a rebalance of fission towards the mid game, which makes some sense given the introduction of fusion.

[FritzHugo3]

You make it!

All what i mised in vanila you do! All the fantastic qol mods.

I would imagine for all the Vanila players who have never played with mods (your own fault if you knew what you were missing LUL) - it could be very overwhelming. So many ‘new features’ - but I can tell you, once you get used to it, you'll wonder how you ever played without it!


Another great thing.


I hope there is a similar display for belts (for bus systems with many tunnels and branches in a small space, this is absolutely extremely helpful for troubleshooting.


(And all what I missed in Satis - but they have not grabed the good modders so it is no qol in )

[KuuLightwing]

I think a lot of commenters are conflating realism with good game design and I would argue against that. If I wanted realism, I’d get a job as a process engineer.

I think a lot of people conflate the dislike of this design as wanting realism, while I don't think many actually presented it this way. I don't want system to be realistic necessarily, and I don't even care that 1.1 is not realistic either, but I just don't like the ideas as shown. Feels like they thrown away old system, and replaced it with a simplistic design of "let's just make pipe network an instant teleport system" and when it (what a surprise) turned out to be too simplistic slapped on top of it an arbitrary limitation that doesn't make much sense.

[Selbet]

dude, are you dense?

you did not read a single line of what I said

@mods please remove this troll from the forums...


Please explain to me how you can not understand that?!
You still need to transport the SAME AMOUNT of steam, but the pumps have 10X REDUCED THROUGHPUT, so you need 10x (practically 5-10x) more pipes to transport the same amount of steam.

I can't comprehend how one can repeatedly fail to understand this simple thing, yes insists to keep on talking.

You do understand that you will not need any pumps if you keep your pipes short enough right? You do not need 10x the pumps, you need 0x the pumps. And higher quality pumps will have a higher pump rate if you want to move steam a long distance.

[doktorstick]

I suppose my apparent dislike isn't that it's so simplistic, it just doesn't give the players options. As compared to the electric network--which is just one big honking thing--you at least get decide how you want to power it, what resources you want to consume to do so, and so on.

With the fluid network there isn't anything like this; the required pumps are a false choice. And no, I don't think the pumping change marginally shifts the direction toward barreling.

[thermomug]

> Pipelines are constrained to a 250x250 tile area

How about taking last step towards realism and introducing proper Water Tower like entity?

You need something intuitive or at least reasonable to justify area of effect constraint of pipe pressure/thoroughput.
You don't need to imitate tower's innards and related infrastructure fully since underground pipes are kinda abstract already and one more "imaginary underground pipe type" won't cause too much of an increase of learning curve for unsuspecting players. In compatison with "no, it's 250*250 and you don't have any control over it unless it's too late".

Dude ... what do you even mean with a "proper" water tower? Why are fluid tanks not "proper" in your opinion? I think you want a building to extend the 250x250 limit, but a pump does exactly that.
The new system was never about more realism, but about addressing the problems of the old system, namely intuitiveness, computational efficiency and maximum throughput.
It is also important to note that the new system has no notion of "pressure" anymore and that flow only occurs at the boundaries (in/outputs) of fluid segments.


Also I don't get why a lot of people here are so mad about a x10 factor change. First, most people here won't have played the expansion yet so they probably don't know what that chance actually feels like and second, in a good engineering fashion there are multiple ways to address such issues. It's not just "you have to build 10x more" (which isn't even true in this case) - it can be - and probably will be - a combination of building few more pumps, at better quality, with a bigger buffer and reducing the comsumption. These "limitations" or "problems" turn into new ideas and solutions! In engineering, there are no problems, just challenges
Let me give a real-world example: Two years ago, I set myself a budget for food. I now spend a little over 100€ a month on food, but to my surprise, I didn't starve yet.
Instead I began shopping more conscious, had to plan more, ate less meat and sweets, cooked more myself, discovered new recipes and local food saving initiatives, lost ~10kg and more! What seemed like (and factually sill is) an annoying restriction turned out to be a simple strategy for a healthy and affordable diet.