Barrels "Fluid handling" - ver. 0.13.0+

[Res0r]

Hello guys!

Reason why I'm writing this suggestion is pretty basic "Fluid handling" solutions.
To the point - if I count well, we have 7 types of liquids in game:

- water,
- oil,
- heavy oli,
- light oil,
- petroleum gas,
- libricant,
- sulfuric acid.

After we discover Fluid handling, we have opportunity to fill empty barrels - BUT, only with crude oil.
Since ver 0.13.0 we can build Flamethrower Turret which demand rafined or crude oil in order to work. Crude oil can be barreled and picked up by logistic robots who may deliever it to request chests all over close to deffence lines and then can be pump by assembly machines into the storage tank (or direct) which may supply nearest area (far far away from our refining plants).
Same goes to Sulfuric acid. Proccessing Unit and Battery assemblers in most of the times are far away from Sulfuric acid tanks since they needs several other items in order to craft.

1) My suggestion is to add possibility to fill barrel with ALL 7 types of liquids in order to move them as an items. Same as Storage Tank, full barrels shall receive color of liquid it contain. Empty barrels shall be called "Empty barrel" not "Empty crude oil barrel" as it have place now.

2) Another suggestion regarding this subject is possibility to reduce Storage tank capacity as it have place with all types of chests. Storage tank at the moment have 2500 units, and we have no option to decrase this number.

3) Cistern wagon - it's sad that we have only 1 type of cargo wagon in game, since we have numerous liquids to handle.

4) Minor idea is to add Pump energy consumption (fuel or electricity) - at the moment it's perpetuum mobile which is irrational

That's it for now. I would like to other players oppinions. Maybe someone discover any MOD which is close enough to my ideas.

Regards,
Res0r

[The_Mell]

Liquid wagon and universal fluid handling are on the to-do list for 0.14:
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-151

[ssilk]

There are also existing and well working mods for this. I really recommend them.


Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=15330 Transport of Fluids/Liquids via Barrels or Tank Wagons

Proccessing Unit and Battery assemblers in most of the times are far away from Sulfuric acid tanks since they needs several other items in order to craft.

That depends strongly on your play-style. My current factory for example has no sufuric acid tanks and the battery production is within the same chunk.

2) Another suggestion regarding this subject is possibility to reduce Storage tank capacity as it have place with all types of chests. Storage tank at the moment have 2500 units, and we have no option to decrase this number.

Don't understand this need. And it belongs more to balancing. I don't feel this is unbalanced. But you are free to enlighten me.

4) Minor idea is to add Pump energy consumption (fuel or electricity) - at the moment it's perpetuum mobile which is irrational

There are many discussions around this. It will not be removed, cause it is very important as it is, cause when offshore-pumps need energy to pump hot water and you don't have coal to heat it you come into a really ugly vicious circle (and besides that: It has no game-value to power it). Same reason, why belts don't need energy. Ideas around this go into direction, that the offshore-pump (all other need energy) will pump more if powered.

[OdinYggd]

2) Another suggestion regarding this subject is possibility to reduce Storage tank capacity as it have place with all types of chests. Storage tank at the moment have 2500 units, and we have no option to decrase this number.

Don't understand this need. And it belongs more to balancing. I don't feel this is unbalanced. But you are free to enlighten me.

If anything the capacity of the tank needs to be buffed in order to make it closer to the storage densities achieved by barrels. The tanks are bulky for only a fraction of the capacity that even 1 box full of barrels can provide.

To regulate the capacity of a tank, attach a circuit wire to it. Its fully possible in 0.13 to connect a circuit wire from a tank to a small electric pump, and configure the pump accordingly to start and stop as needed to maintain the desired fluid level. I do this with my light oil- each of my cracking units converting light oil to gas has a setpoint below which the pump feeding it stops. Like so only a small amount of oil is kept in the tank for making fuel blocks, while the bulk of it is cracked to become the more useful gas.

[ssilk]

That tanks are bulky is in it's nature, the word. And want you want with this change is to make them even bulkier (cause you reduce the capacity, so they contain more "empty space").

And when you think that the tanks are bulky and you need to reduce their size: Why do you use them?
Really: In many cases fluid tanks are not needed.

[Tricorius]

Really: In many cases fluid tanks are not needed.

Although I absolutely agree with this (they aren't needed in most cases), I *do* like using a very small number of them to build a circuit network to regulate oil flow.

For instance, I often have a "primary" oil facility (sometimes in the main base, sometimes elsewhere) that is directly connected to a set of pumpjacks. This provides constant, direct flow of oil to my main facility (especially when beaconed and module-d). I then have a bunch of barrels coming in via railway from remote outposts.

I like using the barreled oil as reserve (since it's already barreled). I have a setup with two crude tanks, wired with electric pumps to regulate oil flow.

If the oil is below 3000, it draws from the barreled stock. (This maintains flow during heavy draw phases, but allows the main oil field to work nonstop supplying oil to the system.)

If the oil rises above 4500, it activates a pump to a barreling assembler which drains the excess off into barrels. (This ensures the main oil field works nonstop and tosses overflow back into the barreling system so no oil is "wasted" by inactive pumpjacks.)

It might be possible to do this without tanks, but it's pretty easy to hook up tanks to the circuit network to monitor their contents.

Note: The full network controlling my oil is significantly more advanced than this small snippet. It actually maintains a pretty complex flow of various liquids, including release valves into solid fuel if there is a surplus of any sort of liquid able to be converted to fuel. But sometimes all of that demand is still satisfied, and so I like the oil re-barreling option (I like to have as much flexibility as possible with the materials...once you make it into something, you can't unmake it.)

[ssilk]

Hm. And where in this scenario are smaller barrels needed?

[Tricorius]

Hm. And where in this scenario are smaller barrels needed?

They aren't. I didn't quote very well (I'll fix it).

I was presenting the only case in which I think you even need a storage tank: connecting to a circuit network. Otherwise I think you can pipe straight into things.

I actually think the capacity of tanks is fine. If anything, barrels should probably hold less oil in relation to tanks (since you can store so many more of them in a chest). But I really don't want the quantities to change, they feel fine as they are.

And as mentioned before, if you want to limit a storage tank to less than its capacity, it only takes an electric pump and a red or green wire.

[Res0r]

In first place I want to agree with you ssilk, that everything can be controlled by logistic networks and even more precise (you decide you want 2500units or you want 1234units) than by chests (you may controll materials by stack only). However, chests gives us this option in most basic way possible - in order to setup that you want 50 (1stack) Fast Inserters in logistic network, you spend less than 1second by clicking "X" and leave 1 box gray. That's it! You will have 50 Fast Inserters in logistic network without complicated combinations whith advanced logistic networks. Everytime your character use 25 Fast Inserters and have damand =50, Logistic Robots will collect items from Passive Provider Chest and after that assemblers fill up that chest to 1stack. No advanced setup needed.

Well, I will answer you how option to reduce capacity of Storage Tanks would be useful.
You must notice, that pipe systems use pressure in order to provide liquids more further. If you have no pressure in Storage Tank, (assume is less than half filled) you may found, your chained machines which demand this liquid, as not effective as it suppose to be. It happend when you have several Storage Tanks connected to each other, be cause in future you expect to store this liquid in larger amout.
Conclusion: At the moment if you have 5 Storage Tanks connected to each other, and you have 2500units of liqid, you have 500units in each which gives you low pressure in pipes. Pipes have capacity 10units/s and you have 2units/s. You have 8 machines in chain who demand this liquid, but only ~3 benefit since low pressure. If we could reduce capacity in 4 on 5 Storage Tanks to minimum, we could receive ~2400units in closest Storage Tank connected = all 8 machines would be feeded with this liquid since pipes are able to provide that much.

SMALL PUMP! - yes. This is the first you have in tongue. Unfortunately I use it at the moment to achieve all I wrote above. I have my "prime" Storage Tank full, when rest Tanks have much less. This quite rauin my build and force me build electric poles in order to power Small Pumps, on field where no other building demand electricity.

Yes, it still can be done without any changes in the game... But my idea can bring "new" option to Storage Tanks, which already exist for any type of chests.

I hope that I make myself clear why and for what - even if my english isn't good

Regards
Res0r

[ssilk]

Hm. Well, I wouldn't call me pipe-expert, but my experience with the say: if you have such less liquid in the pipes, you have in general too less liquid, not too much storage.

Yes, the storage is a point in that case, but only a very small one. In my experience I would say a much bigger factor is, that you can build your liquid network so that the storage is "in the way". Maybe you haven't realized yet, that storage tanks are much, much slower than pipes?

That slow behavior of tanks is the main-reason, why I don't use tanks so much. Good advice (sorry, if you already know that): don't use tanks for throughput of liquid in one direction. Only in/out!

And yes: We need a way to measure how much liquid is in pipes.

[Tricorius]

And yes: We need a way to measure how much liquid is in pipes.

Oooooo. Yes, please!

[Deadly-Bagel]

I would argue that you don't need five tanks connected to each other. Consumers of oil typically aren't short burst productions (except maybe cannon shells), batteries and advanced circuits tend to have a pretty constant draw through research and the various products they are used in. Therefore if your supply doesn't match your demand, you're eventually going to run out. Having your supply higher than your demand on the other hand almost completely eliminates the need for storage.

I usually have a single tank for each type of oil (none for Sulphuric Acid) which I use to control when to crack. Hopefully with 0.15 or at least 0.16 we'll get some kind of alert entity that can flag up when crude oil falls below 2400 (indicating more consumption than supply). No need for messy barrelling and unbarrelling, no worry about having the oil but struggling with fluid mechanics.

[ssilk]

Hopefully with 0.15 or at least 0.16 we'll get some kind of alert entity that can flag up when crude oil falls below 2400

I recommend the alert-combinator mod https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Dr_MarkE ... Combinator for that. This is really, really useful, but the belts need better count-possibilies for throughput...