Barrels hold too much liquid.

[Chartas]

I think barrels can hold way too much liquid as is, and the amount a single barrel can contain should be reduced by... maybe half? Maybe more.

Because...

• ... you can fit 75k liquid into a fluid wagon, but 100k into a normal wagon using barrels. (40 stacks * 10 barrels per stack * 250 liquid per barrel = 100 000 liquid)
• ... barrels don't require dedicated infrastructure beyond two assemblers for loading and unloading and maybe one for crafting the barrels. So i can use barrels in my logistic network and still have a higher throughput while disregarding all the specialized infrastructure like fluid wagons/tanks and pipelines.
• ... it's actually faster to put liquid into barrels and on a YELLOW belt, then to use a pipeline throughput wise, as stated by Lav.
• ... I personally belive that, if there exists dedicated infrastructure that has only a single use case, it should be more effective than any other alternative.

Currently said numbers, coupled with the fact that pipelines are a pain in the *** since you can't walk over them, and that fluid wagons actually need dedicated train stops compared to simply sending them to standard cargo wagon ones, kind of make barrels the more sensible choice in nearly every application.

I think they should not be the number one choice in every situation but instead fill the niche for very low throughput requirements.
If I have this one single assembler in the center of my base and it only needs a tiny amount of lubricant, that's when i should be using barrels to fly it over there using the network or a belt instead of putting a dedicated pipeline. If I have to move huge amounts of liquid the fluid wagons and pipeline should be the more sensible choice.

[AndrewIRL]

You make a good case.

[bobingabout]

250 sounds right. Keep in mind that 250 is the new version of 25, and they've always held 25.

They however haven't always been able to stack to 10, it used to be 5.

Maybe the solution isn't to change the fluid in a barrel, but instead to change the capacity of the fluid wagon, make it double?

Also, A Modding solution, which I plan to implement, would be to use a dedicated barrelling facillity instead of an assembling machine. (As I used to have in older versions of my mod. It was removed for 0.15 because it made it easier to update them if I wasn't worrying about that)

[MeduSalem]

My opinion actually is that they should have removed barrels entirely instead of this freaking mess of universal barreling they added to the fluid tabs, which I'm never ever going to use because I refused to use it already before 0.15.

But that said if they decreased a barrel to hold only 100 units it would also be okay.

Then again I know there won't be a change about it because of how many people will be crying all over it even if there's dedicated infrastructure to do it now like there should have been from the beginning.

[AndrewIRL]

They however haven't always been able to stack to 10, it used to be 5.

Maybe the solution isn't to change the fluid in a barrel, but instead to change the capacity of the fluid wagon, make it double?

Doesn't address OP's third point re yellow belt > pipe. You'd need to enhance pipes to carry more as well. Decreasing the stack size back to 5 would fix the cargo wagon issue (OP point 1) but not yellow belt problem (OP point 3). Decreasing the barrel capacity addresses both.

UPD. Yellow belt can provide 800 * 250 = 200K LpM (Liquid per Minute). A single offshore pump can fill a pipe fully and supply 20 boilers, and those consume 60 per second each, that's 20 * 60 * 60 = 72K LpM. So even at pipe's peak performance a yellow belt is almost three times better (disregarding the cost of all those barrels ).

Link to complete thread is in OP's point 3.

If Lav has his numbers right (I didn't verify) that means the barrels need to be dropped to approximately one-third their current capacity. So down from 250 to say 100.

[Optera]

First of all fluid numbers are all over the place seemingly jumping between liters and m³. (1m³= 1000l)

• Going by barrel capacity we are talking in liters, there are small 25l and industrial 250l barrels. 25kl barrels would be the size of small tank wagons.
• The 75k inside tank wagons seem to be liters again as real world wagons hold 20m³ to 120m³.
• Storage tanks however seem to be m³. A 2500m³ tank still is considered small. The relative small tank storage Graz has a capacity of 8100m³ supplying the whole region with fuel.

Before any balancing can be done fluids should use the same units.
250l barrels and 75kl wagons are fine, with wagons still slightly on the low side.
A single storage tank would have to be in the Ml range. e.g Capacity of 9 steel chests with barrels: 250l*10*48*9=1080kl
Realistic pipelines are way above 1000m³/h.

[Aeternus]

I respectfully disagree.
Advantages:
- Barrelling does offer a higher throughput on both conveyors and loading/unloading (6x stack inserter vs 3x pump-direct-to-tank)
- Barrelling does offer a higher density per wagon (100k fluid instead in 400 barrels vs 75k in tankers)

Disadvantages:
- Barrelling means you need to produce and manage the barrels themselves. Extra production infrastructure for making barrels, loading/unloading them on both ends, extra inserters/belts/chests... And you still need plumbing to get the fluids where they need to be.
- Barrelling requires a two-way handling of the transfer medium. The empty barrels need to be returned after unloading.
- Tanker wagons are ready for service right after they are built. A wagon for a barrel operation has to be stocked with empty barrels before use.

Personally I've started to favor tankers just because they're a lot more convenient then barrels. I still use barrels for moving small amounts of fluid over the logistics net (lubricant to motor pool/bluebelt plant and acid to the uranium mines) using a simple requestor chest/passive provider chest loop. Read out empty barrels available in the logistics network from any roboport, toss some extra barrels into a storage chest if there's too few available. Keeps the system running smoothly. But on rails? I prefer to keep it simple.

Speaking of the storage tanks... anyone else notice how the wagon that holds 75k fluid is about the size of a single actual storage tank?

[bobingabout]

Another issue that passed me by with the tanker issue...
Sure, you can fit more barrels of oil in a cargo wagon than a fluid wagon, with with barrels you need to bring empty barrels the other way too! so although you might be able to carry more oil in the wagon, the end result is carrying less because of carrying the empty barrels back!

Speaking of the storage tanks... anyone else notice how the wagon that holds 75k fluid is about the size of a single actual storage tank?

It costs 3 storage tank to build too. a storage tank contains 25k fluid (If I recall), and the fluid wagon holds 3 times as much. It's pretty much just 3 storage tanks being carried around.

[orzelek]

I respectfully disagree.
Advantages:
- Barrelling does offer a higher throughput on both conveyors and loading/unloading (6x stack inserter vs 3x pump-direct-to-tank)
- Barrelling does offer a higher density per wagon (100k fluid instead in 400 barrels vs 75k in tankers)

As for the first advantage - it takes at most 4-5 seconds to load/unload a tanker. Is that really slower then unloading cargo wagon using 6 stack inserters?

Tbh I don't plan to use barells at all. With tanker wagons available in base game I don't see reason too.
Higher density per wagon remains a benefit because tanker wagons are also heavier which means they will make train acceleration slower. But logistics required for it would be annoying to set up especially if you would intend to send lots of fluid somewhere.

[mophydeen]

I think barrels are only being used to store excess liquid in the base. If you make them smaller they will not be used at all. Remember they were 25 before and were increased to 250 because all fluids are x10.

However I'd like a increase in storage tank capacity from 25k to ... (100k+)

[Aeternus]

I respectfully disagree.
Advantages:
- Barrelling does offer a higher throughput on both conveyors and loading/unloading (6x stack inserter vs 3x pump-direct-to-tank)
- Barrelling does offer a higher density per wagon (100k fluid instead in 400 barrels vs 75k in tankers)

As for the first advantage - it takes at most 4-5 seconds to load/unload a tanker. Is that really slower then unloading cargo wagon using 6 stack inserters?

Tbh I don't plan to use barells at all. With tanker wagons available in base game I don't see reason too.
Higher density per wagon remains a benefit because tanker wagons are also heavier which means they will make train acceleration slower. But logistics required for it would be annoying to set up especially if you would intend to send lots of fluid somewhere.

Yes, it is slower. A stack inserter can move over 25 units per second, assuming full upgrades. A full wagon loaded with barrels holds 400 barrels. So 6 stack inserters should have that thing empty in under 3 seconds, and they will have moved an additional 25K fluid in doing so. Additionally, as stated before, barrels offer higher traffic density after unloading - belting barrels (or transport by logistic bots) is higher throughput then piping things around. But you still need to unload the barrels wherever the fluid is actually needed.
Using tanker wagons isn't practical in all cases however. If you need to move small amounts of fluid over medium distances, I find barrels via the botnet to be far more convenient (mainly to transport acid to uranium mines that are too small to warrant a trainstation). For standard fluid movement like oil from wells to the refinery, I'm using small tanker trains (2 wagons 1 engine seems to accellerate well enough).

[Tev]

I think it is completely fine right now.

Barrels still offer more throughput in situations demanding it. Also enable low throughput on-demand bot-carrying. But they require nontrivial empty-barrel managment strategies. (especially for the high throughput case)

Fluid wagons offer more convenient setup / maintenance of oil outposts.

Imo perfect options both for micromanaging and casual players.

[bobingabout]

Thinking back to my fluid canisters (think plastic barrels, for corrosives and fuel) and gas cylinders that were in 0.14 (Which I've removed due to universal barrelling), the gas cylinders at least only had a capacity of 5 (50 in the new units), so... I wouldn't be opposed to a reduction in capacity, however, they stacked to 50 rather than 10, so the same amount of fluid was in a stack when compared to a barrel.

So, 100 per barrel would be okay.

[Miravlix]

Is anyone ever going to post a reason for why you want barrels to be worse than tanking?

So far we have a really good post explaining why barrels should hold more, but not a single post explaining why they should be worse.

Fine you hate barreling, but that is not a balance issue, it's a personal issue. That fact you hate it just proves that the balance is fine, if everyone hated tankers and loved barreling, maybe that would at least suggest tankers should hold more, but so far everything shows that barreling is harder and therefore should be more rewarding.

[bobingabout]

I think the long and short of it is basically that if you fill a cargo wagon full of barrels, then you can fit more fluid than straight into a fluid wagon.
on top of that, fluid wagons offer no filtering, you can't just bring all fluids to the same station and sort on the receiving end, yet with barrels, you can. It kind of makes fluid wagons pointless.

[darkfrei]

Little barrels with big stack size is much better. It will be same effective by railway, but you are need much more drones for it.

So, pipes and drones must be too bad for long distance and the train wins. Pipes are better for shorter distance, and drones wins when you need a little bit

[Aeternus]

Fluid wagons offer partial filtering. You can disconnect the 3 tanks and fill them each with seperate fluids, 25K of each max. But the division will be 25K per tank, so you can't use smaller fractions or more then 3 types of liquid.

[Chartas]

To quote myself...

• ... I personally belive that, if there exists dedicated infrastructure that has only a single use case, it should be more effective than any other alternative.

This is pretty much the main point. You can use cargo wagons for none fluids. Yet it is more effective to transport fluids with them than to use the dedicated fluid wagon. Why is that?

• The cargo wagon holds 25k more liquid than the fluid wagon.
• It can be loaded and unloaded faster. In case we're unloading the fluid wagon into storage tanks it even slows down as the tanks get fuller, taking additional time...
• It can hold up to 40 different fluids. (Okay we may argue more than three will never ever be needed. But i still lose a lot of space if i divide the fluid wagon in three and only need like one tenth of the 25k i split of for the new liquid. So the cargo wagon also gives better space usage by allowing for better subdivisions of stored liquids.)
• Only recorded downside of the cargo wagon: the need to put empty barrels back into the wagon. This requires some additional filter inserters instead of normal ones. They still can be used for transporting other goods, the pumps needed for filling or emptying the fluid wagon, cannot.

Same for the pipes vs belts.

• Pipes cannot be walked over compared to belts.
• They have a lower throughput than belts.
• They can move less liquid per time unit with increasing distance.
• They cannot be put directly next to each other without using underground belts or mods.
• You actually lose liquid from pipes when refactoring, while barrels simply get picked up.
• Downside of barrels compared to pipes: You have to get them back. (Which can be very easy or hard depending on the situation. Most of the time easy, with a simple provider chest and some bots... This is really the best reason yet. Still i personally think it doesn't stand up to the other arguments for less liquid per barrel.)
• You also have to put an assembler for filling and unfilling the barrels.
• Production of barrels is really a no argument. That's a one time investment you can simply achieve by putting down one assembler and two chests... Otherwise you could argue that you need the infrastructure for creating the engine units for pumps which is definetly more involved, as well as an extra assembler for assembling pipes and underground pipes and storage tanks and so on.

So we have infrastructure that can ONLY transport fluids, yet fails to be better than the more general alternative, which can at the same time also transport other items and is generally less anyoing. I haven't calculated the cost involvements, mayber there's something to be gained there... But that's really pushing it in my opinion.

And it totaly irks me from a logical point of view that i can put more liquid into a cargo wagon with barrels than an empty big tank. Just doesn't make any sense.

So to summarize: Barrels should hold less liquid so that the extra work/annoyance needed for pipes/fluid wagons is actually worth it.
The previously mentioned 100 appear indeed to be a good unit. Or 25 and then upping the stack size to 50 would also be okay.

[AndrewIRL]

Okay we may argue more than three will never ever be needed.

Maybe you want your big polluting generating refinery away from the main base in a nice forest. Maybe there's water nearby and none in a good spot inside your base so you figure to load it onto the train too, because you need it for concrete, explosives and maybe cracking. With fluid wagons you need two cars and you have 6 compartments to load 4 fluids into. Remember not to accidentally mix up the stations and pull into a station that takes sulfuric and lubricant, no filtering means a mess in your pipes. With barrels, just toss everything into however many cargo wagons showed up at the station and sort it all out back at base using your existing infrastructure.

Barrels are OP and need to be nerfed to bring them down in line with fluid wagons and pipes.

[Selvek]

I think the long and short of it is basically that if you fill a cargo wagon full of barrels, then you can fit more fluid than straight into a fluid wagon.

I agree. I mean, it makes no sense that you can fit more of the fluid inside the same sized train car even with the low packing efficiency of circular barrels.

They should re-balance it so it makes sense, like the 12-tile wagons which hold slightly less than a single 1-tile chest