Imbalance between items and fluids in train transportation

[mrvn]

This might be a problem of mods (Angels, Bobs, Pyadon) but to me it seems like tranporting fluids by train generally needs a much higher frequency or longer trains than transporting items. Buffering seems imbalanced as well. A steel chest buffers a cargo wagon and you can fit 12 of them per wagon. On the fluid side a tank buffers a fluid wagon but you can only fit 4 of them per fluid wagon (6 for single fluid wagon trains).

Loading and unloading times seems to be equally imbalanced. Filling a cargo wagon with yellow inserters takes forver but fluid pumps just takes a few seconds. And while inserters get faster (fast inserter, stack inserter, inserter bonus) the fluid pump never changes. But even end game a fluid wagon can be loaded basically instantly while cargo wagons take time.


I think it should take longer for fluid wagons to be loaded / unloaded. A slower starting pump and later fast pump might enrich the game too. The fluid wagon and tank capacities should be rebalanced so roughly the same trains ize and frequency can be used for items and fluids on average across the recipes (but that might be a mod problem, never transported much besides crude oil in vanilla).

Can anyone comment that uses lots of fluid transportation in vanilla?

[Koub]

A steel chest buffers a cargo wagon and you can fit 12 of them per wagon. On the fluid side a tank buffers a fluid wagon but you can only fit 4 of them per fluid wagon (6 for single fluid wagon trains).

This, I don't understand. In vanilla :
1 tank = 1 fluid wagon = 25k fluid units of only 1 fluid at a time
1 steel chest = 48 stacks of items, 1 cargo wagon = 40 stacks of items.

I don't see where your 12 per wagon and 4/6 per fluid wagon are.

[Edit] Now, with sparr's post, I understand sorry for disturbing.

[sparr]

Multiple differences in opposite directions are not imbalance, they are balance.

Fluids take more space to store on the map (tanks vs chests), but they load into trains faster. Items require more infrastructure to move around (inserters and belts), but you can put belts next to each other.

If you really think they are imbalanced, just barrel up all your fluids.

[mrvn]

Multiple differences in opposite directions are not imbalance, they are balance.

Fluids take more space to store on the map (tanks vs chests), but they load into trains faster. Items require more infrastructure to move around (inserters and belts), but you can put belts next to each other.

If you really think they are imbalanced, just barrel up all your fluids.

I wasn't comparing size vs. speed but items vs. fluids.

The consumption/production is imbalanced:
The recipes I'm seeing in pyadon for example frequently have ratios of 1 item but 100 fluid. And stack sizes of 500 for most items. For such a recipe one cargo wagon (500 * 40 = 20000 items) needs 20000 * 100 / 25000 = 80 fluid wagons. That truly is unbalanced.

In vanilla lets look at sulfuric acid as an example: 1 iron plate + 5 sulfur + 100 water = 50 sulfuric acid. 1 cargo wagon holds 4000 iron plates. Add 5 cargo wagons of sulfur, 16 fluid wagons of water to get 8 fluid wagons of sulfuric acid. Not as extreme but still looks heavy on the fluid side.

Where the vanilla fluid recipe changed when the fluid wagon was changed from 3 tanks to 1? I can't remember. But if you adjust the fluids by a factor of 3 the numbers become more equal. I guess in the pyadon case a factor of 10 or more might make sense. But should the recipe be adjusted? That would affect the throughput of pipes (as in one pipe can feed more assembler). Or should the tank/fluid wagon size be increased (the numbers get quite large, don't want to overflow on large train stations)?


On the other side loading is imbalanced too, in the opposite direction as you point out. But I don't think that makes up for the problem of needing 80 times the number of cargo wagons to get a matching amount of fluids for a satelite factory. You can't load/unload 80 fluid trains in the time it takes to load/unload one cargo wagon. Not because loading/unloading fluids is slow (it's way to fast imho) but because 80 trains will deadlock your train network. So you need longer fluid trains. Which means more pumps working in parallel. So the higher speed of pumps doesn't balance things but is simply wasted. The main factor there is how fast you can move trains in and out. But that's a different issue.