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Since we have faster belts in late game, might I suggest creating a Pressurized Pipe that can handle a much higher throughput/pressure (4 times or so), and a High Pressure pipe that can handle even more (16 times or so)?

It would be handy to use those for handling larger steam engine clusters, and for massive fluid transfer rates in megacomplexes. Primarily however it would be useful for running Water to various locations, since it tends to be used a lot, especially in steam engines - running a separate pipe to every cluster of 14 boilers can get tedious.

The setup for a large steam park could then become:
4 pumps -> Normal pipes -> Pressure Pipe -> Normal pipes -> 4x (14 Boilers)
Or:
4x (4 pumps -> Normal pipes -> Pressure Pipe) -> High Pressure Pipe -> Normal Pipes -> 16x (14 boilers)

This would allow for a much easier way to set up larger steam engine parks, and allow feeding from a bigger trunk line much the same way you can feed a lot of smaller processing facilities off of a single Express Belt trunkline.

Suggested cost and prereqs:
Pressure Pipe: 1x Pipe, 3x Iron Requires Logistics 2 research
Pressure Pipe to Ground (x2): 10 Pressure Pipe, 15x Iron. Requires Logistics 2 research
High Pressure Pipe: 1x Pressure Pipe, 2x Steel. Requires Fluid Handling + Logistics 2 research
High Pressure Pipe to Ground (x2): 10 High Pressure pipe, 10x Steel. Requires Fluid Handling + Logistics 2 research

+1

Bob did something with the pipe size but this works awkward.

Lets see how the 0.15 fluid dynamic works.

Greetings steinio

Using the current mechanics, you could easily make a long distance pressure pipe by implementing a pipe with a base area of 0.977 or so (must be just greater than 1/1.025) instead of 1.0. Without messing with the fluid properties, this will top out around 100 units of fluid per second but will go at that rate for more than a 3300 pipe length. Other than that, to improve the flow even more, you'll have to change the way fluids are currently handled. Increasing the pipe area will not get you a good throughput for any reasonable length of pipe.

I'm not just thinking long distance - I'm thinking short to medium distance, but higher throughput. Flow rate can be inadequate when supplying a steam engine array.

Aeternus wrote:I'm not just thinking long distance - I'm thinking short to medium distance, but higher throughput. Flow rate can be inadequate when supplying a steam engine array.

Just use a lot of pumps. Pressure will be higher and you can supply 25 engines with one pipe.

Short distances with high flow rate using water properties:
flow rate / Pipe Area / Max length
140 / 1.5 / 9.8
190 / 2.0 / 5
240 / 2.5 / 3

If you rig the fluid properties to pressureToSpeed = 0.1 and frictionToEnergy = 0.9749 you can get a flow rate of 470 units per second in a pipe with a base area of 4 and it can go 1,000 pipe lengths. Unfortunately, if you put this fluid into a normal pipe I would think the game would throw an error.

darkfrei wrote:

Aeternus wrote:I'm not just thinking long distance - I'm thinking short to medium distance, but higher throughput. Flow rate can be inadequate when supplying a steam engine array.

Just use a lot of pumps. Pressure will be higher and you can supply 25 engines with one pipe.

I tried that but it never seems to work out - hooked 4 Water Pumps to 1 pipe and then tried to supply 2x 14 boilers/10 Steam Engines with them. No cigar, as soon as max performance is requested, the whole thing caves and half the engines shut down due to no water. So either I'm doing something wrong, or the max flow rate in a pipe (distance will probably be no longer then 40 tiles) is not what is needed.

Trying to put in a Small Pump is even worse - it restricts flow rather then improving it.

Aeternus wrote: Trying to put in a Small Pump is even worse - it restricts flow rather then improving it.

Did you try placing many small pumps in parallel? You can get a lot of water through a pipe that way.

The small water pumps need to be used in parallel.

The offshore pump has a pumping speed of 1, while the small pump has only 0.5. So it needs twice as much pumps to fill a pipe completely as with the offshore pump.
And with offshore pump you need 2 or better 3 of them. So we need about 4-6 small pumps to get maximum throughput through pipes.

See also https://wiki.factorio.com/Small_pump

For v0.15 I'm quite sure this will change together with the nuclear steam stuff, cause it is really not very practical yet.

ssilk wrote:The small water pumps need to be used in parallel.

The offshore pump has a pumping speed of 1, while the small pump has only 0.5. So it needs twice as much pumps to fill a pipe completely as with the offshore pump.
And with offshore pump you need 2 or better 3 of them. So we need about 4-6 small pumps to get maximum throughput through pipes.

See also https://wiki.factorio.com/Small_pump

For v0.15 I'm quite sure this will change together with the nuclear steam stuff, cause it is really not very practical yet.

If you need a throughput greater than 30/sec via single pipe you need to use several small pumps in parallel. See the topic below for a design to understand it
Long distance pipes and pumps

Experiments suggest that steam engines do consume 6 liquid/sec, offshore pump outputs 60 water/sec, and small pump outputs 30/sec.

I agree that having a 2nd generation of pipe, a high pressure pipe, would be great.
this high pressure pipe should strore more that normal pipe (like 50 liquid instead of 10) and the speed should decrease slower.

I accept to use steel to craft there pipes.


On my big factory, because throughput of pipe are too slow, I have 4 lines for water and petrol. It's not very nice.

The bigger problem imo is the lack of 2nd generation small pump. 30/sec is waaay too slow as we can see a common task may require 5 pumps in parallel which is definitely rediculous...