Fluid Mechanics Still Broken, 6 Years Later?

[Tertius]

Problem #1) The Pump requires power to operate and requires separate isolated solar panels/accumulators to keep the pump and circuits working.

Problem #2) The Pump requires an external logic circuit to perform something slightly more complicated than a simple boolean operator on a single fluid.
[...]
It is not that the Vanilla Factorio fluid management is lacking or insufficient. I would rather have something that doesn't have #1 and #2 drawbacks, and there is room for improvement to the Vanilla Factorio fluid management.

These drawbacks don't really exist. That pump is within some production facility, so power is always nearby. And it doesn't require any combinator. Just a wire from the tank (nearby) and the pump (in reach of the tank), and the condition "heavy oil > 24000" in the pump. This is similar to other scenarios where you use pumps as valves: you will integrate them into the production facility, so everything is nearby.

I consider mods like the one you describe some kind of cheat. They provide some simple solution to a genuine game challenge the player is expected to resolve with vanilla mechanics, not to cheat it away with a mod. You're certainly free of course to use any mods you like, no matter how cheaty, however I will not, as long as there is a way with vanilla. The game is full of useful basic tools, we just need to detect the proper use for them.

There's a difference between a cheat and a game addition: A cheat simplifies some game challenge by changing existing mechanics. An addition adds something to the game that doesn't exist in vanilla. A combinator to read the content of a single wagon for example is an addition, because it's not possible to read the content of one wagon in vanilla. Only a whole train. No matter how hard you try, it's not possible. Or reading the temperature of an entity or of some fluid - no way in vanilla. On the other hand, managing fluids is possible already with pumps and storage tanks.

[Qon]

I say throw all the current fluid code out and rewrite it. Another of my favorite games (using Unity game engine), created a system of pipes that are basically conveyor belts with different graphics. It does mean that fluids only will flow in one direction. Which does greatly simplify the code and lowers the processing required to a large degree. This will make it much easier to make Megabases. I think the processing power would be better utilized in other areas of the game.

Trying to simplify fluid dynamics just takes way too much processing power and requires too much head scratching by the developers. This is a Game and Not a physics simulation. Another game on early access, is also trying to get fluid processing to work well in the Unreal game engine. They are also failing to get it to work properly.

If you want fluids on belts then just barrel them and put them on belt. Or install a mod that converts all liquids into items.

Making fluids just behave like belts is just removing a logistics option that is different from the other ones. If they work the same then what's the point?
Yes you can make the game run faster by deleting features. But the game is the features. Fluid simulation isn't taking up a such a massive amount of compute resources that it is unreasonable for the gameplay it provides and it still allows for belts, bots and trains (and the rest) to get adequate compute resources.

Some people want fluid system to behave like electric system for improved performance. Instant and limitless transfer over any distance.
Others want power to work like fluid system for increased gameplay in managing the infrastructure. There are advantages to both, but what we have now gives good performance and interesting gameplay and changing either to work like the other harms gameplay too much for a too small performance boost (liquids aren't used as much as electricity) or doesn't bring enough new gameplay to motivate the relatively big performance issues the change would create. And some for thing if fluids become "another belt".

[XT-248]

These drawbacks don't really exist. That pump is within some production facility, so power is always nearby. And it doesn't require any combinator. Just a wire from the tank (nearby) and the pump (in reach of the tank), and the condition "heavy oil > 24000" in the pump. This is similar to other scenarios where you use pumps as valves: you will integrate them into the production facility, so everything is nearby.

I consider mods like the one you describe some kind of cheat. They provide some simple solution to a genuine game challenge the player is expected to resolve with vanilla mechanics, not to cheat it away with a mod. You're certainly free of course to use any mods you like, no matter how cheaty, however I will not, as long as there is a way with vanilla. The game is full of useful basic tools, we just need to detect the proper use for them.

There's a difference between a cheat and a game addition: A cheat simplifies some game challenge by changing existing mechanics. An addition adds something to the game that doesn't exist in vanilla. A combinator to read the content of a single wagon for example is an addition, because it's not possible to read the content of one wagon in vanilla. Only a whole train. No matter how hard you try, it's not possible. Or reading the temperature of an entity or of some fluid - no way in vanilla. On the other hand, managing fluids is possible already with pumps and storage tanks.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to restart solid fuel production without power? It's a daunting task, considering that a solid fuel production line relies on power, and the boiler consumes solid fuels to generate that power. This example is where a valve that operates without using energy is beneficial.

A pump or pump-with-circuit without energy will not help anyone with oil processing when the power grid loses energy.

A Factorio player can harness the power of a pump with an isolated solar energy grid to perform the same function.

A pump with an isolated solar energy grid or an always-on valve can manage the fluids necessary for solid fuel production when the power goes out. However, the valve offers a "Keep It Simple and Stupid" solution.


Those valves are indeed 'cheating' more than convey belts that move items without power demand.

If we take the 'no-cheating' logic to its extreme conclusion, the result would not resemble anything familiar to the Factorio Community.


These valves are game-changer game-additions, offering relief to those who find the oil-cracking process intimidating and want a quick and straightforward solution instead of grappling with multiple complex mechanics like fluid balancing, the logic for cracking, and fluid box distribution.

They can place these valves and have a simple, functional pumping in place, returning to enjoying the game.

[Tertius]

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to restart solid fuel production without power? It's a daunting task, considering that a solid fuel production line relies on power, and the boiler consumes solid fuels to generate that power. This example is where a valve that operates without using energy is beneficial.

A pump or pump-with-circuit without energy will not help anyone with oil processing when the power grid loses energy.

A Factorio player can harness the power of a pump with an isolated solar energy grid to perform the same function.

I definitely had this situation, and my solution is to build a big enough solar power plant that is able to power my mall that includes support stuff like oil production for solid fuel. I have power switches that can disconnect non essential parts of the base, for example the whole research part. Or the mines. Or the smelters.
I don't speak of separate power grids for solar power. It's all on the same main power grid. It's all one big main power grid. This global power grid is segmented by power switches. This way there is always power for the essential part of the facility, it may only be necessary to disconnect some nonessential part by turning one or two power switches off. That's the way how power outages are handled in the real world as well, as far as I know.

As far as I remember, having an 1:1 ratio for steam power plants and solar power plants works out good, and it tremendously helps with having low solid fuel consumption in the first place. You can use your rare first oil in a productive way to produce plastic bars instead of solid fuel you just burn away.

I build a solar power plant (including as many accumulators as possible, up to the 0.84 ratio) that has about the same power as the steam power plants. One full steam power plant is 36 MW, so after the first full steam power plant I build a corresponding 36 MW solar power plant. After the second steam power plant comes the second solar power plant, and this lasts comfortably until nuclear power or is even overkill, as far as I remember (it's a long time I did these earlier game stages).

[FunMaker]

I am personally okay with the fluid flow mechanism. I know that this is hard stuff to handle easily. My main problem is, that for long ranges with effective pump speed you have to place a pump every underground pipe. This is even harder to handle on full conversions mods like Angelbob and it is annoying that the only way to come by this problem is to put the consumer entity next to the producer entitiy to compensate the bad throughput on pipes. And another problem: It does not scale like belts or trains.

[XT-248]

I definitely had this situation, and my solution is to build a big enough solar power plant that is able to power my mall that includes support stuff like oil production for solid fuel. I have power switches that can disconnect non essential parts of the base, for example the whole research part. Or the mines. Or the smelters.
I don't speak of separate power grids for solar power. It's all on the same main power grid. It's all one big main power grid. This global power grid is segmented by power switches. This way there is always power for the essential part of the facility, it may only be necessary to disconnect some nonessential part by turning one or two power switches off. That's the way how power outages are handled in the real world as well, as far as I know.

As far as I remember, having an 1:1 ratio for steam power plants and solar power plants works out good, and it tremendously helps with having low solid fuel consumption in the first place. You can use your rare first oil in a productive way to produce plastic bars instead of solid fuel you just burn away.

I build a solar power plant (including as many accumulators as possible, up to the 0.84 ratio) that has about the same power as the steam power plants. One full steam power plant is 36 MW, so after the first full steam power plant I build a corresponding 36 MW solar power plant. After the second steam power plant comes the second solar power plant, and this lasts comfortably until nuclear power or is even overkill, as far as I remember (it's a long time I did these earlier game stages).

Given space, resources, and other limitations, I go for as much solar energy and 0.84 ratio accumulators in the late game as I can reasonably acquire.

I kept the original boilers but converted them to standby emergency-mode-only run if everything is out of energy: think hospital with a backup generator during a blackout. I switch to Solid Fuel when I have enough oil and refinery infrastructure to have an ample supply of oil-derived fluids.

I might have some extra Nuclear Energy with smart mode built-in for a colossal megabase. By smart mode, it will only run enough nuclear fuel to fill the accumulators during power peak or night.


I have segmented localized power grids to keep critical facilities running (pumps for Nuclear Energy, for example).

All nuclear-energy-related inserters and water pumps are isolated from the primary power grid, so they will always run regardless of what happens with the primary power grid. Pumps requiring electric power drive the need for separate power grids, not limited to producing solid fuels but for anything related to fluids, old and new*. *We are getting more fluids in Factorio 2.0 and Space Age.

A valve would remove and simplify the need for a separate infrastructure to power pumps that are mission-critical to keep the factory running.

[FuryoftheStars]

[Rseding91]

Those are all distribution problems with demand exceeding supply, produce as much as you need and you have no issues.

This is the same answer as it was 6+ years ago. It's such an incredibly simple solution - I have no idea why people insist on making fluid splitters when the root issue is "You don't have enough fluids: make more"

[FunMaker]

Those are all distribution problems with demand exceeding supply, produce as much as you need and you have no issues.

This is the same answer as it was 6+ years ago. It's such an incredibly simple solution - I have no idea why people insist on making fluid splitters when the root issue is "You don't have enough fluids: make more"

In my opionion this answer does not reflect the problem i have with the fluid system as a player. It's okay to just duplicate a production line and say "i increased the output" but that is a boring solution.

I think you are doing the right thing for item-based products - you give the player the opportunity to increase the throughput:

• FFF378 - Throughput for trains (well this increases the throughput on long distances even for fluids)
• FFF393 - Throughput for belts & inserters

But currently i see nothing that increases the throughput of fluids on short-to-mid-distances.
My personal main concern is not that the fluid system itself. My main concern is that it does not scale very good. If alternating pumps and pipes or putting pumps in a line or adding 10+ pipes side by side is the intended solution to increase throughput, then be it, but for me this is stays behind the solutions for item based products and does not tickle my brain.

[FuryoftheStars]

Those are all distribution problems with demand exceeding supply, produce as much as you need and you have no issues.

This is the same answer as it was 6+ years ago. It's such an incredibly simple solution - I have no idea why people insist on making fluid splitters when the root issue is "You don't have enough fluids: make more"

In my opionion this answer does not reflect the problem i have with the fluid system as a player. It's okay to just duplicate a production line and say "i increased the output" but that is a boring solution.

I think you are doing the right thing for item-based products - you give the player the opportunity to increase the throughput:

• FFF378 - Throughput for trains (well this increases the throughput on long distances even for fluids)
• FFF393 - Throughput for belts & inserters

But currently i see nothing that increases the throughput of fluids on short-to-mid-distances.
My personal main concern is not that the fluid system itself. My main concern is that it does not scale very good. If alternating pumps and pipes or putting pumps in a line or adding 10+ pipes side by side is the intended solution to increase throughput, then be it, but for me this is stays behind the solutions for item based products and does not tickle my brain.

I believe this is a different issue/concern than what the OP was complaining about and thus what Rseding91 was addressing.

[FasterJump]

This is an interesting topic, and I might to do some testing with beaconed manifold setups.

With the new refineries and chemical plants from the water planet coming in the expansion (just joking, I don't know if refineries and chemical plants are coming and if there is a new water planet, but this is a popular educated guess)... so basically, if there are more powerful fluid-related machines coming in the expansion, pipe throughput could become a huge issue, especially because pipe throughput is limited (and depends on the pipe length and maybe manifold junctions too).

Rather than multiplying pipe throughput by 2 or 10, a simple fix would be to divide all building consumption and production by 2 or 10 (basically reducing the precision up to one digit)

If no fluid improvement are coming, players would be force to separate their intermediate fluid products into modular sections (such as 3 light oil refineries output only connects to 7 chemical plants). Players couldn't minmax their setup with the mimimal number of machies needed (if 5 refineries and 13 chemical plants would be enough, the player still have to build 2 sets of 3 refineries and 7 chemical plants).

Belt throughput received a 33% buff with the green belts and a 300% buff with stacking 4 items instead of 1, while pipes have not received any throughput buff.

[Npl]

Those are all distribution problems with demand exceeding supply, produce as much as you need and you have no issues.

This is the same answer as it was 6+ years ago. It's such an incredibly simple solution - I have no idea why people insist on making fluid splitters when the root issue is "You don't have enough fluids: make more"

I'm just starting with oil procession so I dont kown how bad of a problem this is, but there's a general idea that you should be able to expand resources, buffer them, expand production and things still kinda work. If I dont consume everything I am not producing enough, rinse and repeat.

Currently I only have 2 pump jacks with the next field being way of and right next to yuuuge biter bases. I agree that my first and foremost problem is getting more oil (and getting big guns for that), but from what I read its a inexplicable hard problem already to evenly fill multiple fluid wagons.

[EustaceCS]

I agree that my first and foremost problem is getting more oil (and getting big guns for that), but from what I read its a inexplicable hard problem already to evenly fill multiple fluid wagons.

Not necessarily.
Do note that the man which started this discussion is crash testing liquid physics mechanics with excessively branching pipes on top of severely underperforming liquid supply.
If you'll use more or less straight sections, with pumps installed between each section, you're unlikely to have any trouble of theme starter's kind.
As of fluid wagons in particular, if there are too few oil spots - it's well worth slamming a buffer storage tank. So it'll be filled up while your fluid cargo train travels back and forth.
If there are too many oil spots - by the time your train would return, pressure in pipes will be more or less even (AND maximal) so a reasonable quantity of fluid wagons will be filled just fine (the pressure won't drop so no problems with balancing it).

[Tertius]

I'm just starting with oil procession so I dont kown how bad of a problem this is

There is actually no problem. People tend to exaggerate issues they think that are a problem but actually are just ordinary and genuine game behavior.

Some gamers still around from the earliest early access development versions seem to have a trauma about oil production and perpetuate this trauma. I'm not from that time, but from what I read, advanced oil processing (the recipe for turning crude oil into heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas) seemed to be slightly more simple than it is today. Today it contains the challenge to balance between heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas to not clog refinery output. These people seem to have difficulties with doing that. May be they didn't want to change their previous factories. Actually, that challenge is not more difficult than everything else non entirely trivial. If it comes to my personal experience with advanced oil processing, I'd like to say it with Caesar: veni, vidi, vici.

So my advice: just play the game and ignore voices that insinuate some thing is broken. It's not. The game is extremely well balanced and scales extremely well from tiny to extremely large.

[Npl]

I agree that my first and foremost problem is getting more oil (and getting big guns for that), but from what I read its a inexplicable hard problem already to evenly fill multiple fluid wagons.

Not necessarily.
Do note that the man which started this discussion is crash testing liquid physics mechanics with excessively branching pipes on top of severely underperforming liquid supply.
If you'll use more or less straight sections, with pumps installed between each section, you're unlikely to have any trouble of theme starter's kind.
As of fluid wagons in particular, if there are too few oil spots - it's well worth slamming a buffer storage tank. So it'll be filled up while your fluid cargo train travels back and forth.

Yeah, I am not talking about the OP, and I get why buffer tanks should be used. I talk about the tank's load not being balanced, ie. connect your wagons with a pump each and one taking alot longer to clear/fill: https://youtu.be/zJBvw28bQu0?t=1721

[Loewchen]

Yeah, I am not talking about the OP, and I get why buffer tanks should be used. I talk about the tank's load not being balanced, ie. connect your wagons with a pump each and one taking alot longer to clear/fill: https://youtu.be/zJBvw28bQu0?t=1721

The fascinating thing about discussions about this "problem": 90% of examples people give for it, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
The sole reason why the wagons empty asymmetrically is because THE SETUP IS UNSYMMETRICAL... The wagon closest to the outlet will empty fist and the one furthest will empty last. Who would have thought.

[FuryoftheStars]

Some gamers still around from the earliest early access development versions seem to have a trauma about oil production and perpetuate this trauma. I'm not from that time, but from what I read, advanced oil processing (the recipe for turning crude oil into heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas) seemed to be slightly more simple than it is today. Today it contains the challenge to balance between heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas to not clog refinery output. These people seem to have difficulties with doing that. May be they didn't want to change their previous factories. Actually, that challenge is not more difficult than everything else non entirely trivial. If it comes to my personal experience with advanced oil processing, I'd like to say it with Caesar: veni, vidi, vici.

I think I came in for the 0.15.0 release (April of 2017)? I believe as of then, both basic and advanced produced all 3 outputs, just in different ratios (basic was close to balanced, while advanced was more petrol and less of the others). With 0.17.60, they changed it to the way it is now. As such, I'm not sure if you're referring to the 0.17.60 change, or something from before I even started. I know the 0.17.60 change was because people were having a hard time understanding how to balance and deal with the fluids. They were either not seeing or understanding the multiple indicators that one of the outputs were backed up, or they figured that the only way to deal with it was by mining the full tanks, thereby deleting the contents, and they didn't like that.

[mmmPI]

Some gamers still around from the earliest early access development versions seem to have a trauma about oil production and perpetuate this trauma. I'm not from that time, but from what I read, advanced oil processing (the recipe for turning crude oil into heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas) seemed to be slightly more simple than it is today.

I would say it's the opposite. Today it is simpler than it used to be. It used to be that both oil receipe were giving 3 products, but with different ratios, when researching advanced processing, there was better ratio, but the complexity of managing all 3 output to avoid clogging was already necessary for basic oil processing. Except you could not use cracking with the basic tech, so everyone was researching quickly the advanced oil processing, and setting up cracking otherwise you'd either have to mine the tanks. Or at some early stage of factorio developement you could void fluid in steam engines, not just steam, but also oil.

I agree with your conclusion nonetheless.

I'm just starting with oil procession so I dont kown how bad of a problem this is, but there's a general idea that you should be able to expand resources, buffer them, expand production and things still kinda work. If I dont consume everything I am not producing enough, rinse and repeat.

Currently I only have 2 pump jacks with the next field being way of and right next to yuuuge biter bases. I agree that my first and foremost problem is getting more oil (and getting big guns for that), but from what I read its a inexplicable hard problem already to evenly fill multiple fluid wagons.

It doesn't have to be a problem fluid wagons can handle 25K fluid, there is very little need to avoid filling them entirely, and when they have 25K fluid, they will have an even quantity of fluid in them. If you have only 2 pumpjacks, you don't need to try and fill multiple wagons, 1 is enough, when the pumpjack will deplete it will take forever to try and fill an large train.

If you wish to fill multiple wagons at equal rate, then it's possible to increase or derease the limit of the train stop that is used to load the oil onto the train so that no train try to reach the train stop if there is not at least 25000 oil buffered for an incoming train per wagons in their dedicated tank. ( 2 wagon => 50 000 K required for 1 incoming train, 3 wagons, limit set at 75K 4 wagons, 100K ...)

The main thing to avoid i think is a 10 wagons train that can handle 250K oil waiting for the 2 pumpjacks to fill it entirely when those output at 2/second. You could later in game have several of those oil patch and ideally you don't want a train semi-idle on each of them. You'd want few trains that only visit the oupost that have enough oil for a fast loading, this way you don't need to keep adding trains that will do nothing but waiting 99% of time.

If not all wagons have exactly the same rate at loading it doesn't matter much if the oil is buffered and can be loaded in every wagons. It would change maybe 1 or 2 second the loading time, whereas it could be in hours if large trains are allowed to visit almost empty outpost. 1 or 2 second delay will occur anyway if the train cross the path of another train due to traffic and so on the magnitude of which is higher.

Things that are a "problem" would be trying to split evenly 1000 fluid into 7 wagons. Those are traps, systems shouldn't be made to rely on things that are not possible to do.
Trying to "split" 1000 fluid per second, through 3 pipes is a more subtle trap but still a trap. ( 333.33333333333..... fluids per second)

When you don't have enough fluid, you could be tempted to do " 500 fluid per second" into 250 and 250. That's also a trap even if the numbers are nicer, a minor trap, but still a trap, because in game if you have "enough fluid" and 2 consumer that consume the same, it will balance out anyway, the fluid will fill the pipe network, and each consumer will take as needed. It's "needlessly" difficult to try and split the fluid by oneself to distribute it evenly instead of using the way consumer just pick up fluid from pipes. It is less of a dead-end as the previous traps as it is possible to solve the problem, not impossible due to having no control over the roundings that occurs. But it is very difficult when there exist easy method, as such it's difficult to consider the difficulty of the task as problem for me. Yes the task is difficult, but it is also not necessary compared to just filling entirely the fluid wagons all the time, full/empty .

[FuryoftheStars]

Except you could not use cracking with the basic tech, so everyone was researching quickly the advanced oil processing, and setting up cracking otherwise you'd either have to mine the tanks. Or at some early stage of factorio developement you could void fluid in steam engines, not just steam, but also oil.

They did provide solid fuel recipes with the BOP tech, though.

[mmmPI]

Except you could not use cracking with the basic tech, so everyone was researching quickly the advanced oil processing, and setting up cracking otherwise you'd either have to mine the tanks. Or at some early stage of factorio developement you could void fluid in steam engines, not just steam, but also oil.

They did provide solid fuel recipes with the BOP tech, though.

True ! I was more of a lazy voider myself after i saw it on speedrun videos, i'm not sure if there was priority on splitter back then, with those 1x1 14 boilers for 10 steam engines columns. It was almost a decade ago x).