Liquid collisions should slowly void

[Radioactive Pretzels]

When you accidentally cross-connect two fluid pipes, the liquids "jam" and it is a real pain to clean out the "contaminating" liquid. Usually you just tear up all the pipes since it's too annoying to identify exactly what parts of the pipes are still wrong! Other solution methods add pumps into tanks, or a steam engine to void the fluids until the pipes are cleared again.
All three solutions are ANNOYING. It's not a fun problem to resolve, especially since you can't see fluid contents of short pipe segments easily.

This annoyance could be fixed by having mixed fluids SLOWLY void contaminanting fluids. If a pipe with one liquid is connected to a pipe with a different liquid, the fluid engine should slowly destroy some of BOTH liquids. As long as more contamination isn't being piped in, the contaminating liquid level will automatically drop and eventually disappear at the cost of losing an equal amount of the "correct" liquid too. So your oil pipe with a little water jamming it will slowly "fix itself" after you fix the bad piping. The engine doesn't have to worry about any global "which fluid is the contaminant" question.. it just sees two connected pipes with different fluids, and instead of equalizing the levels (like it would if it were the same fluid) it just decrements the levels of BOTH fluids, and eventually one of the fluids will evaporate to 0, solving the problem.

[MeduSalem]

The fluid engine already tries to push the wrong fluid out of the pipe to a certain degree... but it doesn't really work as well as it should because after a certain point the engine fails to compress the fluid to the point it is destroyed.

I think it would require some fundamental fluid engine reworks to solve that problem, which is probably not what the Devs are going to do.

That said it might be alleviated by 2 things:

1. Better display of pipe contents for short pipe segments, especially underground pipes, which would help finding pipe segments with the wrong fluid inside.
2. Get rid of the stupid auto-connect of pipes which are often the source of wrong connections. I honestly never liked the auto-connect anyways and there is no real reason why connections can't be done by dragging the pipes into another. The argument of "but the puzzle-effect would be gone" is really dull at this point or only mediocre at best. That's like if one couldn't place two straight pieces of Belt next to one another without them auto-connecting... it would be annyoing and so it is for pipes.

An additional thing the player can do on his part is... don't fill the pipe with liquids until you are sure that the connections are correct. Then you avoid having to clean up the mess in the first place... but that's something that comes with experience.

[Yoyobuae]

Pushing mixed fluid types doesn't quite work. But small pumps can "slurp" up to 10 units of some liquid type at it's input. If you need to slurp more then add pipe segments at the output of the pump.

[BenSeidel]

Hmm... I like this idea, but at the same time I don't like the idea.
It would be really handy when an incorrect connection occurs, but only if you notice the issue. If you don't notice the issue then you will still get the two liquids being pumped in and you could lose quite a lot of both.

Maybe having the pipes blow up would be far more useful . This way the liquids would still be destroyed and you could just replace them quickly enough, saving the requirement of picking them up. If you had a bot network you could leave them to auto-replace them. It would also give you instant feedback that you have connected the wrong pipes together!

Lost an eyebrow? what did you connect together!

[Yoyobuae]

Lost an eyebrow? what did you connect together!

<mythbuster>Am I missing an eyebrow?</mythbuster>

[Ranakastrasz]

This is why I use Flow Control and Pipecleaner. Also it is why I considered writing a mod that entirely removes liquids aside from water from the game. It just gets tedious, and is so much more irritating than belts.

I read that supposidly, tiny amounts of liquids can be crushed into non-existance when they interact with other liquids under pressure, but I have never observed it. I expected it when I had 0.1 of one liquid and 10 of another next to it, with the far side being a structure that accepted the second type. It just sat there.

[ssilk]

is so much more irritating than belts.

I agree partly. I think pipes should have a mode, that makes them transparent so that you can watch liquid-type, temperature and flow of direction.