Directional pipe placement

[soltis]

From what I can tell, running two pipes immediately next to each other is less efficient in terms of overall throughput than two pipes separated by any distance - which raises the very good question of why this behavior exists at all.

The easiest solution would be to make pipe bonding occur directionally, matching the orientation of the pipe, similarly to conveyor belts, with one important distinction - placing another pipe on to of the first in another orientation would create a connection (if possible) in that direction, with a modifier key to auto-connect in every direction possible.

The behavior of pipes to attempt join to dissimilar fluids systems is profoundly maladaptive and should be disabled entirely, and doing so would permit the placement of bundled pipe runs which is a basic practice used by any sane engineer in the real world (provided the contents don't make it dangerous to do so for some reason)

[ssilk]

From what I can tell, running two pipes immediately next to each other is less efficient in terms of overall throughput than two pipes separated by any distance

Can you point us to the source of this? Where do you have that from?

Because it makes no sense.

[eradicator]

+1 for "drag like a belt" pipes. Though I have a feeling it's not quite that easy to make that intuitively usable for everyone.

____

Can you point us to the source of this? Where do you have that from?

Because it makes no sense.

He's talking about this:

faster.png (84.77 KiB) Viewed 2938 times

The "double" pipes total flow speed is highly dependant on build order. Only when built in the right order (for example right-to-left zickzack) can it reach the same speed as two seperate pipes, but when built by bots in random order it will be slower. There's even mods for this. From memory I'm tempted to claim that this comes up in any topic about fluids so it'd be difficult to quote any particular source for it. Just try it yourself.

[ssilk]

Aha. So I point to this:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=95010 Is the Fluid Rework still planned?

I think this will not be optimized any further (not within this current version) because it has too many flaws. (Working on one end and the other end gets broken.)

The fluid system is something, which needs to be completely rewritten, but then it will behave completely different than yet, or you let it as it is and live with the limitations.

[soltis]

The fluid system is something, which needs to be completely rewritten, but then it will behave completely different than yet, or you let it as it is and live with the limitations.

I don't really care about the fluid system itself; it's adequate. The quirks it has actually make it more interesting in some respects, even if it is a little ... weird.

What I actively despise is the way pipe construction behaves. Eradicator's image - the top one - is a case that makes no sense either in game or in the real world; there is no benefit ingame, and IRL it would actually perform significantly worse than two parallel pipes, particularly under pressure, high flow rate, or large distances, due to insane amounts of turbulence.

The fact that it's the default behavior in the game is bad enough, but the fact that it ALSO under performs in-game compared to two parallel runs (except in the ideal case of correct build order, which I consider an irrelevant edge case because it is impossible to automate) makes it a genuine misfeature.

Not only that, but I reiterate that it becomes impossible to tightly bundle the outputs of a system. A refinery can produce up to three fluids simultaneously, but there are numerous potential pipe arrangements that are impossible because they would require two dissimilar fluids to immediately neighbor one another. Having the auto-linking feature for similar fluids would be a quirk, but having the auto-linking actively prevent valid layouts because it forcibly attempts to link all neighboring pipes is ... one of the worst pipe related behaviors I've ever seen in an engineering game.

[ssilk]

I know that it doesn’t make sense. But it’s a game. Whatever is possible to do in that game will be done. I also made pipe connections this way, when fluids where introduced. But soon I thought: how inelegantly looking. And later I thought: much more useful if connected via underground pipes. And currently I think: the system has its flaws and we don’t know all rules (e.g. maybe the rule differs, depending in which direction the flow goes), so I actively avoid to use the edges of that system, which results normally in elegant, efficient and useful builds. And as software developer I would say “no” to change anything on the pipe system without enough tests, that guarantees me, that I didn’t change an important feature (which might be also the reason, why there is no one at wube that does “fix” it).

Having directional pipes: will not happen, because it will remove an important puzzle, that you need to solve with combination of pipe and ug pipe.

And there are some mods, that introduces such pipes, but you need to build it yourself.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Flow%20Control
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Flow_Control_Fix
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pipelayer
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/underground-pipe-pack


Also useful helpers to have more fun with pipes:

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Automatic ... _Continued
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PickerPipeTools
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/show-max- ... d-distance
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pump

[eradicator]

Having directional pipes: will not happen, because it will remove an important puzzle, that you need to solve with combination of pipe and ug pipe

Hm. Nah. It's not an interesting puzzle because there are too few solutions. No real sphagetti occurs because spamming underground pipes everywhere is the best solution. Also underground pipes are visually annoying because they hide what's going on. It's the same kind of bullshit that pre-belt-optimization underground-spamming-for-better-ups was. If I remembered the name I'd link you to a quite fun old puzzle game that even allowed crossing pipes on the same tile without wasting two tiles on "underground" pipes.

It's not even impossible to run parralell pipes in-game. These *should* be the same, but aren't.

screenshot_000h_53m_38s.png (27.7 KiB) Viewed 2852 times

one of the worst pipe related behaviors I've ever seen in an engineering game.

My personal worst example is "Oxygen not Included".

If you have any coding experience I think it would be interesting to see a mod that implements your "drag and drop" behavior. It would probably be similar to FlowControl without having to handle dozens of different items. Maybe even integrateable into flow control. And while you're at it it might be worth offering a "merging" feature that merges multiple straight pipes into one for undergrounde-equivalent flow. If a mod can demonstrate that it works well it has a much higher chance of getting into vanilla.

[ssilk]

These *should* be the same, but aren't.

Obviously they are not the same and will never be.

Nothing should, all could.

[soltis]

My personal worst example is "Oxygen not Included".

I'm curious, that's a game I haven't played.

If you have any coding experience I think it would be interesting to see a mod that implements your "drag and drop" behavior. It would probably be similar to FlowControl without having to handle dozens of different items. Maybe even integrateable into flow control. And while you're at it it might be worth offering a "merging" feature that merges multiple straight pipes into one for undergrounde-equivalent flow. If a mod can demonstrate that it works well it has a much higher chance of getting into vanilla.

I'll consider it, but I code for a living so I usually don't do mods. 8-16 (on crunches) hours a day of staring at code doesn't really fill me with longing to do it more on my off hours.

[netmand]

Factorio's method of laying pipe systems using only two different pieces is an elegantly simple approach to something that can be quite complex. Because of this, I discount all of the ways this could be better.

It would be nice if straight pipe remained straight without developing holes on its sides, adding curved sections to accomodate when fluid needs to turn... but then there will need to be additional junction pipes for when the fuild needs to be split/combined, etc. The numbers of pieces quickly goes up and we start to find designs we can't do when something doesn't quite fit right.

I wonder why they chose to locate the outlets on assemblers in the middle, yet place them on the corners in checmical plants. It would have been cool if the outlets worked like on the pumps. I digress...