Fluid Flow Restrictors

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TheLogical Lowdown
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Fluid Flow Restrictors

Post by TheLogical Lowdown »

I would love to see some flow restrictors in the game for the fluid system. Something like the pump, except it restricts the flow of fluid throw it. It could be selectable from a scale of 10 (max flow) to 0 (no flow). The fluids in the game are already measured this way so this could be easily implemented. I have two chemical plants right next to each other, yet the one making sulfur takes all 90% of the petroleum gas, while the plastics plant barely gets any. A simple flow restictor in the line on the sulfur side would solve this so easily.

sciencemile
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Re: Fluid Flow Restrictors

Post by sciencemile »

So would you want some sort of Splitter, only for Pipes instead of belts?

TheLogical Lowdown
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Re: Fluid Flow Restrictors

Post by TheLogical Lowdown »

while a splitter would work, i would much rather be able to control the amount of flow through the pipes via a "flow restrictor", which could just be a valve that can be opened and closed but also everywhere in between. The sulfur plant has priority over the plastics plant to get petroleum gas, but if i could make it so that the sulfur plant could only draw the amount of petroleum gas I want, then the plastics plant would have more access to the petroleum gas. Lets say set the valve to 5 flow rate for the sulfur plant, but leave the plastics plant at 10 flow rate, then keep checking the plants and see which gets the most petroleum, a little balancing act with the valves and i could make them both share the gas.

sciencemile
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Re: Fluid Flow Restrictors

Post by sciencemile »

A possible solution in the meantime:

You could directly separate the output lines for the petroleum based on the desired ratios; it's not as completely malleable as the scenario you intend, and you're a bit limited until you get higher oil processing tech, but once you've got that you can have one chemical plant being fed directly by the oil refinery and the other being fed by light oil cracking chemical plants.

I don't know the exact outputs of each offhand, but with a bit of math you could work out the proper ratio you want.
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Or, a more basic one, if you simply want one machine to have higher priority than the other, put an electric pump on the pipe leading to that plant.

Also halting the production of the chemical plants when you reach a certain amount of Sulfur can be done either by logistics chests or just creating a delay in the assembly line that's using up sulfur as fast as you can produce it.

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ssilk
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Re: Fluid Flow Restrictors

Post by ssilk »

When I built up this https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=3724 I found, that the fluid don't follow the shortest way or the biggest pressure difference. It can be seen, if you fill a circular pipe completely with water and place a pump in this circle and now begin to add more pipes around this simple circle. Perhaps I make an own thread about it.

But what I mean is, that the simulation for the fluids needs at first some more tweaking within the next 2-3 versions and some more optimization, before we can say "I need this and I need that".
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