Friday Facts #336 - Offshore pump redesign

[Drury]

The new pump design looks great :>

The pipe with water rushing past the little window looks very fast by comparison though. It looks like there's no way that slow pump could produce such a torrent of water. Maybe the "water-window" on the pipe should move slower, or the pump should move faster?

This always bothered me with regular pumps. It's one of the slowest animations in the game, but balance-wise the pump is extremely fast. You can fill a fluid wagon with three pumps before the animation cycles once. You shift 25K fluid this way, but visually it looks more like giving the tanks a tiny flu jab.

[GreenBeing]

The pump really looks great. I think, the pump should be powered by coal as a burner pump.
With fluid handling, you'll get the electric version.
All pumps shall be useable for everything, incl. offshore. The burner one just needs fuel and shall be less effective and less pump power.
The electric one shall be like the one now, but with offshore capability.
So, the electric pump could be used for directly filling a train from water.

+1
Also, the new pump looks great! Great job as always.

[Twisted_Code]

the Hi-Rez pump looks SO much nicer than the existing graphic (no offense to whoever made the current one...), especially factoring in the point you made about how the one side can overlap land in small enough bodies of water. Looking forward to the update!

[Bauer]

The pump really looks great. I think, the pump should be powered by coal as a burner pump.
With fluid handling, you'll get the electric version.
All pumps shall be useable for everything, incl. offshore. The burner one just needs fuel and shall be less effective and less pump power.
The electric one shall be like the one now, but with offshore capability.
So, the electric pump could be used for directly filling a train from water.

+1

I know how it works... but it still irritates me thet the off-shore pump doesn't need power.
And the pump needs electricity but it has not an electric engine?!



BTW, IMHO the power requirement of pumps spoils the visual design for long pipes.

[darkfrei]

I know how it works... but it still irritates me thet the off-shore pump doesn't need power.

We have mod for it:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnerOffshorePump

[mrvn]

Looks fantastic! However, I'm a bit concerned that it might be confusing, especially for new players, when the offshore pump and regular pump look almost identical but one requires electricity and the other doesn't.

A perfect opportunity to implement a power mode to the offshore pump and a powerless mode to the regular pump.

Offshore powered will function like it does now. Unpowered will pull just enough water to get a boiler going.

Regular powered will be like now, Unpowered will let fluid flow one way but not pump anything.

The way the bootstrap problem is solved for e.g. burner inserters is that they start with some energy when placed. Enough to grab some coal for themself. Same should apply to the offshore pump. It starts with energy and pumps a bit of water till the energy is depleted.

[Johansho]

Nice design, hoped for burner offshore pump tho.

There usually are mods for everything. With some luck, you can find one for this, too. ;.)

I found, tweaked and played with such a mod, ofc. Its not about my personal solution to this.
I'll expand.

Unpowered offshore pump feels cheaty.
I get that part, where you may put nuclear reactor into your pocket - its not about realism, more like about consistency.
We have burner and electric era, yet there is one single entity using magic.
I also understand, that game has to start from most simple setup, so that new player gets into it smoothly.

I don't have any idea for improvement by myself. Maybe it is the best way to have it afterall. I don't know.

Yet every time I start new game, I can't unsee.

Its simply wierd, .. and we even use Electronic Circuits to build it

[Twisted_Code]

[...]and we even use Electronic Circuits to build it

yes that particular detail is peculiar isn't it? While I don't particularly care about microscopic balance issues, or at least not ones that have no easy solution short of making basic power generation WAY more complicated (for starters, we'd probably have to have an electric tier of pump in addition to the suggested burner tier), that inconsistency is going to bother me now.

[conn11]

I think a somewhat cheaty offshore pump giving free water is fitting the current devs doctrine of accessibility over complexity in the early game. Like removal of the pickaxe, the item limit for assemblers and of course in late early game newBOP.

With that in mind, dose the offshore need to pump 1200U/s if unpowered?I would argue against it.
Proposing a low flow mode for an unpowered (speculative) burner pump. Water flow should be around 60 or 120/s. Enough to power 1 or probably 2 engine saturated boilers in a blackout. This should give players enough time to set up an good enough coal supply, without creating feedback loops.
In consequence the electric powered iteration of the offshore pump, could as well be the placeability of regular pumps over water.

But all of this has the downside, like changing entity size at least for the burner iteration to actually allow refueling.

[darkfrei]

While I don't particularly care about microscopic balance issues, or at least not ones that have no easy solution short of making basic power generation WAY more complicated (for starters, we'd probably have to have an electric tier of pump in addition to the suggested burner tier), that inconsistency is going to bother me now.

The base mod must have mod settings for such things. The start player has void powered offshore pump, but it can be changed in the "mod settings".

[bobucles]

Proposing a low flow mode for an unpowered (speculative) burner pump. Water flow should be around 60 or 120/s.

This probably won't change much. Players will solve their problems by stacking a dozen unpowered pumps, that way they're guaranteed to be okay. They're cheap enough to spam build, after all. The big change is seeing an annoying blinking power icon on the pumps. Forever.

[conn11]

Proposing a low flow mode for an unpowered (speculative) burner pump. Water flow should be around 60 or 120/s.

This probably won't change much. Players will solve their problems by stacking a dozen unpowered pumps, that way they're guaranteed to be okay. They're cheap enough to spam build, after all. The big change is seeing an annoying blinking power icon on the pumps. Forever.

Probably. Not to mention the belted supply network, becoming useless if switched to electric pumps. And the too small model for convenient refueling.
Taking into account for how long the free energy solution has worked and was immersive enough, changing anything now isn’t worth the hassle.