Small amounts of fluids should be pushed out or destroyed by other fluids

[mrvn]

Sure, all possible. Seems overly complex though. And it would be destructive. My ideal solution would be that the lesser fluid gets pushed ahead of the much larger fluid. No loss there and you can use a tank with 2 pumps to split the fluids. Activate one pump on water > 0 and the other on oil > 0. Then on the other end of a long pipeline you can alternately push in water or oil.

Right... forgot you could do that with pumps.

I wonder then if there was a technical reason why the devs didn't do this in the first place vs destroying the fluid?

It's not always transparent why devs do the things they do. But I believe if there where technical reasons why this has no chance of ever seeing the light of day the devs would have said. They have in other cases. Anything possible but not a priority simply gets left here till some dev takes a fancy to it. E.g. see the recent improvement of lag removal for multiplayer. Sometimes old things gets fixed, so there is hope.

[UkcsAlias]

If im right a system of pipes is handled as if it is a single object with each exit/entry point having a seperate tracking point, and values are equaly spreaded out acros those mid sections. And the issue is that while a pipe section might show 0.333333, the system itself might have 5 entire units. But the exit point only sees the 0.3333 value for its logic. And the longer it pumps out 1 type, the lower the ratio gets, but it never reaches 0 because of that.

The only way to resolve that would be if pumps have filter capabilities. As then it could still use the entire system to pump out only that specific fluid, and use a minimum treshold to override the normal logic (if fluid is below x, it pushes all out regardless on fluid position in the pipe). But to me that would allow deliberate mixing and lazyness because of that, which is something i wouldnt like. This sounds more like mod material to me then.

[mrvn]

There are some optimizations for fluid systems but I don't believe they combine pipes like you say. I remember show cases with the fluid debug options on what show waves moving through the pipes and such.

Anyway, when fluids are mixed the pipe is broken into parts for sure. When you hover over the pipes you see each fluid type and the exact boundary where one fluid ends and the other starts. If it where one combined pipe and fluid levels are just interpolated then with tons of water on one end and dregs of oil on the other the water would get the larger part of the pipe and the oil just the endpoint.

[ssilk]

When I think over it: it makes much more sense to have a pipe-cleaner-tool for that. Click on the pipe, and all current content gets flushed out. Much simpler.

Oh no. I often have 50k oil and 0.5 water in a pipe when the bots screw up. I don't want to loose the 50k oil. You sometimes have 0.1 oil or 40k oil to choose from too. Or did you mean just the fluid in the entity that was clicked?

Wouldn't be better than the current way. Think: automation, automation, automation.

I think there are different scenarios. I think of a scenario where only some remaining fluid is in the pipes.

Or there is a mixture: some pipe is water, some crude and you click with the tool on water and it gets sucked off, plus it searches the neighborhood recursively for more water, until all gets sucked of. Pumps are natural borders of that.

[mrvn]

You still have a bunch of cases to consider. You can have water trapped in a number of dead ends with oil in between. So not all water needs to be connected in the pipe system. Do you have to hunt down every one of them and click at them? I assume things the current popup considers barriers, like pumps, the tool would stop at? If there is 0.3 water in the pipe system connected to a pump and a tank with 20k water then clicking the pipe should not empty the tank too.

Overall I don't think the tool would be such an improvment. It turns 2 clicks into 1 click while loosing a lot of control. Just yesterday I had mixed pipes again. There was a bubble of nitrogen trapped somewhere in my air pipe so the machine needing air only got partial input. Air and Nitrogen look quite similar and finding that Nitrogen bubble in the pipe would have been hard. Instead I just clicked on the pipe anywhere and the popup showed me all the fluids in the system. Much more useful.

I think for manually removing trapped fluids the current system is good enough and even better than the suggested tool. And for automation the tool does nothing.

[ssilk]

If there is 0.3 water in the pipe system connected to a pump and a tank with 20k water then clicking the pipe should not empty the tank too.

It clears that fluid, which you’re clicking on.

Instead I just clicked on the pipe anywhere and the popup showed me all the fluids in the system. Much more useful.

Which popup? And even then: you don’t know where all that remains hide.

[mrvn]

If there is 0.3 water in the pipe system connected to a pump and a tank with 20k water then clicking the pipe should not empty the tank too.

It clears that fluid, which you’re clicking on.

Instead I just clicked on the pipe anywhere and the popup showed me all the fluids in the system. Much more useful.

Which popup? And even then: you don’t know where all that remains hide.

The window that opens when you click on any pipe or tank. That's basically your tool with the trashcan icon being a confirm button and more options what to destroy.

[ssilk]

But that can and should show you only the fluid in this pipe. I meant it should show all types of fluids in the current “system” (enclosed by pumps).

So normally it shows one fluid. In the mixing case two or more…
I click one of the buttons and all that fluids in are flushed.

[mrvn]

But that can and should show you only the fluid in this pipe. I meant it should show all types of fluids in the current “system” (enclosed by pumps).

So normally it shows one fluid. In the mixing case two or more…
I click one of the buttons and all that fluids in are flushed.

Yep. More options than your proposed one-click tool but requires to look more closely at the widget, make a choice and click a second time.

For something you do a couple of times during a game I think it's perfectly suitable. So that just leaves the automatic case.