Underground pipe description missing

[Velox]

Hey,

Just spotted that underground pipe distance descriptions and throughput are now gone (I'm not going mad am I? They did used to show how much water they could transfer???).

I can't really find anything about this but from looking into it, I think maybe vanilla made all underground pip distances the same so they removed the description? I'm purely going by a new vanilla game which doesnt have distances labelled on them and the Factorio wiki that states "The maximum distance at which an underground pipe can connect is 10 tiles, resulting in a gap of 9 tiles in between" with no mention of different distances. This being the case, is it not possible to override it and add the description back into Bobs? Finding it quite annoying to not have the descriptions there as I usually only use the longer pipes for longer runs.

I have Bob's underground re-work enabled and tried disabling it which didn't help but as I say, I'm presuming this is down to it now being missing from vanilla? Weird though as I searched through 0.15 and 0.16 and couldn't find anything in the notes.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Pipe_to_ground

Cheers

[bobingabout]

1. Pipes are all the same size now, the different sizes wasn't exactly friendly for the water transfer simulation, especially the smaller pipes. So the description is no longer needed.
2. Distances are no longer fixed, the overhaul can change their lengths, so a single description doesn't work. I did try and experiment with a dynamic distance description, unfortunately my attempts to make it display were unsuccessful, so, for the moment at least, I felt it would be best to just delete the range from the description.

This results in no description at all, since the 2 pieces of information were both removed.

[Termak]

TBH it only showed how much a pipe can hold, not the throughput, ppl did test this a lot and i think the smaller pipe always won.

Since all pipes are equal size, they can move about 1200 fluid/sec shorter distances even more with supershort ~5-6 squares, about 100 to 170sh length and dropping constantly while distance increases. So you are fine piping inside normal sized base and using undergrounds since whole underground distance counts as just 2 pipes.

If you need to move large amounts of fluids over thousands of squares use trains / barrels, or make pumping stations to keep the fluids going.

[Velox]

Sorry been away.

Ahh ok makes sense. To be honest, not really bothered about the capacity, it was more the distance that was annoying. I'll make a cheat save and gauge the rough distances on each.

[bobingabout]

I actually think it's pretty bonkers as to why the underground belts tell you their distance, but the pipes do not.

I'm sure there was a topic about it, but I can't find it, maybe we were just talking about it in general discussion, but belt and pipe distances did come up.

I'd just tell you what the distances are, but it's not easy to remember without looking them up, but that's partly due to how many different options there are, there's at least 4 configurations for belts alone simply by choosing if you want the belt overhaul turned on (which adds black, the tier 0 belt) and if you turn on the distance over-ride, which then uses a formula for distances. which itself has 2 options due to if tier 0 belts exist or not.

There's 2 options for pipes too. lets give this a try.
Iron, Stone, Copper: 1
Steel, Bronze: 2
Plastic, Brass: 3
Ceramic, Titanium: 4
Tungsten: 5
This is the revised base distances, and as you can see, there is 5 distinct distances.

With the distance override turned off, the formula is Tier x5 +5, so iron has a distance of 10 (that's a gap of 9 between the 2 ends), steel has a distance of 15, etc.

withe the override turned on, the formula is tier-1 * per tier + start. (effectively the same formula, but defined differently, because to make the options friendly, the option for the + part is named as if it's to set the absolute distance of the first tier)
The default values are PerTier = 4, and Start = 11. So, Iron being Tier 1 means you have (1-1)*4 + 11. the 1-1 = 0, so cancels out the 4, leaving with just 11, so you have a space of 10 between the 2 ends of the pipe. Then it's +4, so Steel is 15, same as the non-override distance, but then Plastic is 19 ((3-1)*4 + 11 = 2*4+11 = 8+11 = 19), so a gap of 18 between the two ends. As a result, the top tier, tungsten is (5-1)*4 + 11 = 4*4 +11 = 16+11 = 27, which is 3 tiles shorter than without the overhaul.

You can also tweak these numbers in the settings.

Why (when the override is turned on) these values? The numbers for belts are starting 3, per tier 4. 4 is the same. Tier 3 of belts = 11, ((3-1)*4 +3 = 2*4 + 3 = 8+3 = 11) the same as tier 1 pipes, which means Tier 4 matches tier 2 too.

to continue "Why these values", I drew them on a grid (which I can't find right now) and a Tier 1 UG belt placed back to back with a tier 2 UG belt next to it, will have the first end point of the tier 2 belt right next to the 2nd point of the tier 1 belt. There is consistancy. I calculated that if you take a set number as the starting distance +1 (belts 3 and pipes 11, so that's 4 and 12) then use some easily divisible number of this (to get whole numbers out, so, in this case, both numbers easily divide by 4) and use that as the per tier, then when you place them in a chain (max distance, and have an exit lead stright into the entrance of the next stretch) then every so often, they perfectly line up!

And that is WHY those numbers.

However, if you don't use the override, they use the old numbers that most people will already be used to.

[Velox]

Suffice to say it's complicated then ! Ok I understand why no pipe distances now. Pity it cannot somehow just read the distance set by whatever mod you have installed with whatever settings that mod has and display it but theres obviously a good reason why it cannot do that. To be honest this...:

Iron, Stone, Copper: 1
Steel, Bronze: 2
Plastic, Brass: 3
Ceramic, Titanium: 4
Tungsten: 5

...is probably all I need. Now I know if copper (my standard for all pipes) isn't cutting it, to go to plastic / brass > Titanium > Tungsten (I don't bother with the other flavours) as Tungsten was always the longest and it doesn't look like much has changed. This also confirms that the way they're laid out on the game menu is based around 'longest to the right' which is also good to confirm - I hadn't got around to loading up a cheat map to test them all so thanks for saving me that time!

Thanks for the explanation!

[Chibiabos]

I really hope you keep pecking at this, bob. Its one of those little annoying things to have no in-game differentiation between the different underground pipes to tell when you have researched one that will reach farther than your existing ones and its worth switching.

[bobingabout]

if you know material tiers (It's mostly obvious by looking at what science pack unlocks it) then that tier now marches their distance level... except tungsten which is +1 from what it should be.

you know what I think would be awesome? if the game engine just told you underground distance for pipes like it does belts. I'll look into seeing if this could be an option.

[Serenity]

Showing the pipe tiers on the tool tip would be great too if something else doesn't work. So you know what has an equal distance regardless of your settings

[bobingabout]

Showing the pipe tiers on the tool tip would be great too if something else doesn't work. So you know what has an equal distance regardless of your settings

I have actually tried to do that, and it failed.