Factorio Forums

Someone in the general section was just complaining about not being able to run parallel pipes and it got me thinking about a solution:

1. Shift-Right-click on an existing pipe you want to connect to. This selects the pipe as the "context pipe."
2. Place a new pipe beside the context pipe. The new pipe only connects to the context pipe and to any machines, never to any other adjacent pipes.
3. The newly placed pipe becomes the new context pipe.

This way you can snake new pipelines through heavily congested areas and you won't connect to other pipes.

And this can also be applied to belts so you can quickly lay down a belt path without constantly hitting R.

TL;DR: There should be a way of deciding what a pipe connects to rather than it connecting to all adjacent pipes.

It is (in my experience) impossible to make a compact Oil system. The reason for this is that you cant put two pipes next to each other without them connecting, meaning pipes need to have an entire square of space between each other.

There needs to be a better way to connect pipes. Maybe instead of there being a pipe, there is a straight pipe, a curved pipe, a three way pipe, and a four way pipe. That's the best way I can think of.

The use of underground pipes really helps compacting that oil system design. I personnally kind of like the way pipes connect to each other.
If you want, here's a quite compact layout for your oil processing :
http://imgur.com/a/ERVhg?gallery#9BucJzY

Or even better http://i.imgur.com/6H1DAM0.jpg

damn dude, that's a lot of oil refineries.

but yeah, that's pretty much the way you have to plump the inputs/outputs of theoil refineries. I typically do add an extra tile between the pipes of gas/light oil/heavy oil, but thats because of what I do on the end of the line.

Sometimes HarryNews is right... Sometimes a method of controlling wethether if a pipe should connect to an adjacent tile or not would be appreciated. But most of the time conflicts may be resolved through extensive use of Underground Pipes, which avoid the conflicts at the cost of additional resources since Underground Pipes are pretty resource intensive, even more so if one uses them to bridge 1-3 tile gaps instead of the maximum possible gap.

But I like to think that there could be a way of using a Keyboard Shortcut to change between the default "connect-to-everything"-behavior and a more guided way of laying pipes. Like for example pressing <SHIFT> while dragging a pipe will draw a pipeline that ignores any adjacent/parallel pipes until you release <SHIFT>. Corners would also be possible by starting to drag the pipe from existing stubs.

If above is too coding intensive the "connect-to-everything"-behavior could be generally removed and one has to drag with the pipe over 2 tiles to connect them manually. I wouldn't mind about that because that's actually the way I am laying pipes most of the time anyways... By dragging them. That way it would pretty much work like the road-tool from Sim City 4 or any other building game of the sort. There they only connect if you drag a crossing manually, otherwise you have two deadends facing each other.

Where's the fun in that? Factorio is already pretty easy even now, what's left after even more simplifications like 90° inserters, nonconnecting pipes, etc.?

HarryNews wrote:There needs to be a better way to connect pipes. Maybe instead of there being a pipe, there is a straight pipe, a curved pipe, a three way pipe, and a four way pipe. That's the best way I can think of.

I disagree very strongly. I find it super convenient that there is only one kind of above-ground Pipe and that it automatically connects all all orthogonally adjacent above-ground Pipes. If I had to constantly shift between Straight Pipe and Curved Pipe plus have to use the R key to rotate them, then laying above-ground Pipes would become very cumbersome.

dee- wrote:Where's the fun in that? Factorio is already pretty easy even now, what's left after even more simplifications like 90° inserters, nonconnecting pipes, etc.?

Fun in fiddling around with underground pipes? There's like a ton of things I can think of that are fun... but pipe mess is actually not one of them.

While I'm pretty much an expert on most layouts out there as well as getting my own to work... There are still some situations where I think "Damn you autoconnect!" because it prevents me from doing some eyecandy - and an appealing factory is quite important to me as well as a functional one. This happens most when running parallel pipes and 2 T-connections at the same height as well as other similar stuff that would render a layout much better to look at.

No offence but it sounds like you would like to reduce the game to the bare minimum just for the sake of difficult layouts as if the game doesn't offer enough puzzling with dozens of different recipes already. Well let me tell you this... Autoconnecting pipes are no real challenge because most people either find their way around them on their own and from thereon use the same layout in every map they create over and over with little to no changes because the autoconnect prevents them from experimenting around a lot anyways and if not they go on the internet to look up some layouts they can copy. So how much challenge is there? It's a onetrick pony and the challenge is gone after you find a working layout that you can copy&paste from map to map.

For example belts also don't autoconnect to tiles next to them. Imagine how it would suck if that would be a thing. And how much more possibilities it offers due to the fact that they don't autoconnect. And that's how I also think about pipes. I think about the possibilities.

Peter34 wrote:

HarryNews wrote:There needs to be a better way to connect pipes. Maybe instead of there being a pipe, there is a straight pipe, a curved pipe, a three way pipe, and a four way pipe. That's the best way I can think of.

I disagree very strongly. I find it super convenient that there is only one kind of above-ground Pipe and that it automatically connects all all orthogonally adjacent above-ground Pipes. If I had to constantly shift between Straight Pipe and Curved Pipe plus have to use the R key to rotate them, then laying above-ground Pipes would become very cumbersome.

While I agree on the fact that there shouldn't be several different pieces of pipes one has to place, one dedicated for each situation one could encounter... I'd still encourage the developers to overthrow the autoconnect in favor of "connect-on-drag" feature that connects pipes as long as you are dragging your mouse over them while holding a pipe in your hand. So you either can drag long pieces of straight parallel pipes or create corners and intersections just by dragging over the appropriate involved pipes.

That's some very good suggestion MeduSalem.

That's on the way. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =68&t=2388
And as I know Kovarex, this simple thing is in the end a complete rewrite of autoplacement/connect; not only for pipes, but also poles etc.

MeduSalem wrote:Fun in fiddling around with underground pipes? There's like a ton of things I can think of that are fun... but pipe mess is actually not one of them.

No offence but it sounds like you would like to reduce the game to the bare minimum just for the sake of difficult layouts as if the game doesn't offer enough puzzling with dozens of different recipes already.

Fair enough
And I do understand your reasoning.
Probably have to give it a try. There are mods for nonconnecting pipes available.

dee- wrote:Fair enough
And I do understand your reasoning.
Probably have to give it a try. There are mods for nonconnecting pipes available.

Well maybe I was a bit harsh... I'm sorry about that.

There are mods yes, but most of them introduce additional items as a workaround... which renders it quite painful. The "connect-on-drag" would solve that problem as we could continue to use the one pipe we have and just drag over the involved pipes to make them connect from tile to tile. Would be the simplest way without introducing new items or making anything overly complex.

ssilk wrote:That's on the way. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =68&t=2388
And as I know Kovarex, this simple thing is in the end a complete rewrite of autoplacement/connect; not only for pipes, but also poles etc.

Hopefully also for normal pipes and not only for underground pipes. Because if the autoconnect for pipes would stay with such a "connect-on-drag"-feature it woulh be a shame.

I'm not sure, but I think they see that - as with the belts - as a puzzle and part of the game?

I have vague memory of reading that pipes were planned to be reworked to work like belts in terms of rotation. No idea where I seen that tho.

So it would be really great if you could build two pipelines, with different fluids that is, right next to each other! It doesn't really make sense that you have to have a space between them. just a thought.

Underground pipes are your friend.

You can place these next to each other.

Some mods add things like Straight pipes, those are designed to be able to be placed like that.

Goal

Optimize the game space.

Situation

When building pipes, they are always trying to connect to each other.
When the contents of the pipes are different, you have to retreat a precious distance.

Decision

Make sure that pipes with different contents do not connect to each other ↴
ㅤ

Almost the same: Directional pipe placement