Seemingly solid mass-power setup, but idling engines

[Chicago]

Hi fans,

Here is my setup. I created lines of grass in a big lake and made rows of: pump, pipe, steam engine, boiler, robotic arm, robotic belt with coal. All boilers are at 100C but steam engines are all over the place, from 15C to 100C and in between.

At the same time -- my engines are mostly IDLE. I need 850MW during the day, which is mostly solved by my 1k+ solar panels, but at night everything falls down to 200MW and comes to a halt. I checked: I am running on one power grid. Everything has coal and water. There is demand - but still idle. Could it be a bug?

[DaveMcW]

I only see 120 MW of steam engines in that picture.

Also, don't join offshore pumps together. The fluid system is weird and it does not flow the way you expect.

[mergele]

I am actually more interested in knowing why some of your machines work at all. I just tried your setup none of mine got any heated water. Also you really should place the boiler before the steam engine, not after it.

[Acarin]

Absolutely - you need to build pump, pipe the water to the boilers then to the steam engines. And I would recommend 1 offshore pump for each group of 14 boilers/10 steam engines, and keep the water systems separate. As has been said, the fluid system can be odd...

[kingarthur]

the reason its all over the place is your pumps are pushing cold water though the steam engines and then into the boilers to be heated and only some steam engines work because as others have stated fluid mechanics are weird and hot water manages to circle back to some of the steam engines. it also why the temps are all over the place because the engines are getting water from random amounts of boilers

[Chicago]

You guys were right. I've since developed a different power setup; I'll build it and see if it'll give me the 1GW power I need. I will post pictures and statistics.