In my experience, most fluids flow OK without doing anything special. Ten oil refineries running flat out don't typically back up, with only a scattering of pumps acting mostly as non-return valves. However, I'm running a modest nuclear plant, I built 4 reactors in a square, but found that I only need two running for my power requirements, so don't feed the other two at all. Providing water for this rig turned out to be problematic, I built it before I'd pushed my wall out, so it's quite far from the water pumps. I could rip it up and rebuild nearer to the pond, but that's a factorio solution not an engineering solution. IRL people don't move nuclear reactors.
I assume I'm on the new 1.0 release, and I hear there was a fluid overhaul. I was running the 0.18 beta, and I just checked, I'm now opted out of beta versions, and I see a new Wube circuit on the load screen. Congrats on the release
Back to the water. I laid down an overkill of offshore pumps, feeding a pair of storage tanks, then two pipe to ground, a right angle, another pump, another tank, and basically followed that pattern (without the right angle) to the reactor. My flow maxed out just over 1400. After the update my reactor was basically running dry, so I quickly slapped down a train to transport from the tanks by the pumps. Between the two, the reactor's running great, but both are required. Without the land pipe, the reactor would run dry in the time the train takes to fetch a load. I could add a second tank to the train, and more storage next to the reactor, but I really feel like I should be able to run water faster through pipes.
I redid the pipework to speed it up, I removed the tanks along the way, and mixed every pipe-to-ground jump with a pump, the entire way. I now get 1714 of a theoretical 12000 on every pump. Of the offshore pumps, one is running 1000 of 1200, another is running 400 of 1200, and the other four are idling. The pump from the offshores to the first tank runs 1712 unless the train docks for a refill, then it jumps to around 4700. The same for the pump between the first tank and the second. The train loads from the second tank. I have to assume that pipe to ground is the limiting factor. I will experiment with shorter stretches, parallel lines, and just normal pipe. Might as well try just pumps as well, or alternating pumps and tanks. God help me, I'm getting a flow over 10000, even if I have to turn on the other two reactors and lay down a gratuitous radar array to quadruple my power usage.
