Fluid Mechanics Still Broken, 6 Years Later?

[FuryoftheStars]

I have found a way to more than double the throughput from 1200 all the way up to 3000 fluid per second ! I think in no time it will become the new standard :

Throughput optimisation.jpg

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The good thing is that it also prevent fluid from oscillating in a way difficult to predict. One such setup allow to feed up to 5 foundries working at 100%. It can even provide for assembly machine 3 with speed module and speed beacon all around, those consume around 2800 water per second when trying to make barrels but then it become difficult to extract all the barrels without clocking the inserters, the bottleneck is not the pipe x).

An even better thing i found out, the upper setup doesn't get bad when you extend it :

updated version.jpg

I have good hope that the previous standard of only straight pipes that was causing bottleneck has no more reason to be thanks to this discovery, i wonder if many players are aware of it.

Sure, producing more fluids works up to a point when the pipe becomes your bottleneck.

When the pipe is the bottleneck the trick is to add another pipe in parralel, here is an example :

double throughput again.jpg

This setup is using twice in parralel the proposed new standard to achieve twice the throughput compared to a single lane.

Which side do you think has priority ?

i'm kidding , there are more fluid production than consumption, so it doesn't matter, no machine are starved, no problem !

Love it!

[XT-248]

That is not what I would consider practical pipe logistics.

Here is a practical example of the 1.1 Fluid logistic screwing messing with the player's head.

20240428235505_1.jpg (741.72 KiB) Viewed 2813 times

It doesn't matter that the input and output are not 'equal.' The right side gets zero water, while the left side gets it.

Ideally, I want to see the bottom row (especially the right side!) getting the same amount of water as the left.

Then repeat for the middle row.

Then, ideally, there should be little, if any, leftover water for the top row.

That is in an ideal world. Instead, this is what I get.


Now, I doubled the water throughput from two rows to four rows.

20240429000516_1.jpg (731.72 KiB) Viewed 2813 times

Notice that the middle two pumps below the bottom rows are poorly throttled at the offshore pumps. I did this on purpose for demonstration. Outside of inspecting them individually or the F4 water fluid debugger UI, there is nothing visually to tell that they are not working as well as they could have been.

Even more absurdly, the logic for filling up machines is to go from the bottom left first to the bottom right last clockwise.


After further attempts to get water to go right-wise using pumps with a slight bias and correcting the flawed water pump throughput, the top and bottom machines were the only ones to get water instead of the expected bottom to middle. Also, notice that the highlighted pump is at zero water throughput, the rightmost pump just after the first row.

20240429002808_1.jpg (773.24 KiB) Viewed 2813 times

God helps anyone if their bots place the pipe in a specific order so they can't be held at fault for losing their marbles.

In my testing, those pumps run at a maximum of 2250 fluid units per second. We are talking about machines that consume 519.6 fluid units per second, and one row of pumps can only keep four of them at 100% utilization with 171.6 fluid units per second left over. I would typically have the leftover fluid siphoned off into a manifold with fluid from other rows. As a result, some variation of the above issue has appeared in my pipe logistics. A one-way valve that operates without power or push fluid (that function remains exclusively for pumps) would solve so most, if not all, of the issues that I have above.

Even copying the blueprint from the earlier post with a few adjustments intended or otherwise skew the experimental result.



I have been patient thus far and do not like repeating myself. Anyone can reproduce those unpredictable issues in the editor within the first placement of a pipe as part of a pipe logistic.

Saying that it is not a problem doesn't make it not one.

[mmmPI]

I have been patient thus far and do not like repeating myself. Anyone can reproduce those unpredictable issues in the editor within the first placement of a pipe as part of a pipe logistic.

Saying that it is not a problem doesn't make it not one.

Yes, very patient, i agree, but i am doubting somehow that you dislike repeating yourself, or you must be doing some particular effort for us to understand your problem , because im under the impression that there was some kind of repeating pattern in your interventions, hopefully it will allow you to also get some valuable information to use in return.

Unfortunatly, i will have to repeat what has been explained in this thread no less than 17 times, hopefully this one some understanding will be transmitted, i made an example picture illustrating the only problem i can see in your setup : A lack of fluid " who would have thought x) " . This is due to an excesss amount of consumer placed in a row on a pipe that can't provide fluid for all the consumers causing some machines to lack fluid.

How to detect the lack of fluid that is bound to occur due to the pipe network being designed with insufficient throughput capacity for the amount of consumer placed in a row on that limited pipe network :

You show 6 machines consuming around 2800 fluid per second each . Yet you expect to feed them all with only 2 pipes lanes that are not even properly in parralel, and that contain a sections with 3 pipes in a row capping them at 2250 fluid/second :

terribleexample.jpg (1 MiB) Viewed 2785 times

You have designed in this test setup an arbitrary limit of 4500 fluid per second as input that is not enough for 2 machines working and yet you built 6.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system

The problem in your setup though, was adressed in this thread around 12 times , it is a lack of fluid. Though it was never explained to you how to spot them. Maybe thanks to your illustrating setup, you will learn how to identify them and avoid doing such mistake in the future ?

There is none of your illustrating setup can possibly provide enough fluid for all the machines to work at the same time. They all illustrate "lack of fluid". There is no system made to make sure the fluid is distributed evenly when it's possibleto use pumps tanks and wire for that purpose.

Even the latest one you use only 4 lane of inputs where you'd need more than 6 given that you are using sections of 3 pipes in a row. It would be easier to highlight the bottleneck if the offshore pump were on the screen. It would be more visible where the bottleneck is.

If you want to know which machine will work and which machine will not work when you only provide fluid for not even 2 machines, it is better to not mix the input of those machine together , instead keep them separated, this way you could have your NOT-EVEN-2-MACHINES-PROPERLY-SUPPLIED, producing barrels, and split the barrels in 6 different locations. Since the setups to split fluids requiring tanks and circuits are more complicated to use, you may as well avoid them and keep things simple.

No need to build 6 machines if you don't build the pipes to supply them water.

If you do build 6 machines in row instead of in parralel supplied by pipes that can't provide enough fluid for even 2 machines, then you can use pumps withs tanks and wire to make sure you know which of the machines have priority. That's more about gameplay help than broken fluid mechanic though, as was explained in this thread many times.

[XT-248]

No, you are severely understating your understanding of the issue at hand.


Take your 17 literal pipe-long examples from earlier when I meant figurative, which refers to any entities that move fluids. The logic is so flawed that they show a complete disconnection from how I design a megabase.

There are many other numbers of entities that can move fluids (fluid wagons, barrels, underground pipes, fluid storage tanks, etc.). Do you expect me to honestly believe that I would be willing to accept inefficiencies by using nothing but pipes in my logistics network for a 5k SPM megabase?

The actual length of a pump-to-pump using 17 entities to move fluid (primarily underground pipe sections) would have been 176 tiles. If I add wagons to the mix, it will be even longer.


Your counter-point about my example is invalid because I have already explained it several times. I want to prioritize the first row, and I built three rows to demonstrate that the vertical left side gets prioritized, which is not what I expected or wanted. The disparity between water input and water demand doesn't matter here. Since the point is to demonstrate that pipe junctions are black boxes that the players have no discrete control over beyond picking up and placing pipes without knowing what they would do afterward.

Even increasing the number of pumps and fluid throughput continues to demonstrate that I cannot control where the fluid goes in the same way a splitter can control where items go with priorities and filters.



I am not interested in continuing a conversation in which the other individual treats me like a nail to be hammered.

[Tertius]

A problem (better: challenge) was presented and I will present the solution that works 100% fine with the current fluid mechanics:

Screenshot 2024-04-29 123813.png (348.06 KiB) Viewed 2749 times

Please notice:

• all assembling machines are continuously working at their full speed, so the minimum amount of assembling machines are used. This is optimal if it comes to production line design. Expensive machines (look at all these modules) not working continuously due to insufficient input is not good factory design.
• by providing multiple parallel fluid lines with lower throughput each, it's possible to cross a large distance without intermediate pumps, requiring no intermediate power supply and robust against brownouts. There's a huge difference between 1000/s and 1200/s.
• the engine anomaly to unevenly split fluids doesn't matter at all for this setup. No attempt was made to handle or circumvent it explicitly.
• conclusion: it's possible to design proper production lines even for highest fluid throughput at the assembling machines, so there is no need to fix the engine anomaly. It would be nice to have, but it's not a very important thing to change.
• I'm sure everybody is able to come up with similar setups for other production line design, so the engine anomaly doesn't have real impact if the core principle is followed: produce slightly more than you consume. It's not efficient to employ too much control. Too much micro management lowers production efficiency. Identify how the engine works most efficient and design your production line around these most efficient mechanics. Don't try to force the engine to do things it isn't able to work most efficient with.

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[mmmPI]

I see what you did there :

33 pipes.jpg (386.24 KiB) Viewed 2737 times

You used 3 parralel row of 33 34 and 35 pipes , twice which according to the wiki : https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system is enough to carry the water for the 2 assemblies machines, since even 50 pipes would provide with 1000 fluid per second in such lane, and only 2800 fluid per second are required for the assembly.

You designed a system where there is no lack of fluid.

I thought i would use it to illustrate how it could be modified to also support more assemblies :

with discrete control over junction when there are too many consumers.jpg (1.61 MiB) Viewed 2737 times

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Copy blueprint

This way with the little pumps it is possible to give priority to the first row, or also the instead second row, or the 3rd row why not, or other combo like only the first and the last of the bottom part.

Now of course doing it manually is a little annoying, especially if you want to provide an equal amount of fluid to more than 2 machines, since that would be a situation of fluid shortage you'd be constantly switching things on and off, instead it is very well possible to handle with combinator clocks that open pumps the same amount of time like a self reseting timer from the wiki that count up to 60 and open a different pump from 0 to 20 or 20 to 40 or 40 to 60, Or with tanks that maintain the same level, or reading a chest to know which assembly to open. There are plenty of control scheme possible this is just an illustration that player in fact have ways to control fluid in junctions when they create a system that needs it. They don't need to create such system in the first place, as it's more complicated to handle. But still possible .

[FuryoftheStars]

No, you are severely understating your understanding of the issue at hand.

[...]

Your counter-point about my example is invalid because I have already explained it several times. I want to prioritize the first row, and I built three rows to demonstrate that the vertical left side gets prioritized, which is not what I expected or wanted. The disparity between water input and water demand doesn't matter here. Since the point is to demonstrate that pipe junctions are black boxes that the players have no discrete control over beyond picking up and placing pipes without knowing what they would do afterward.

Even increasing the number of pumps and fluid throughput continues to demonstrate that I cannot control where the fluid goes in the same way a splitter can control where items go with priorities and filters.

The devs have already acknowledged that fluid does not split evenly at junctions multiple times, especially in severe low fluid provided cases.

However, as has been explained multiple times, you are only providing enough fluid for (less) than 2 machines to run, and yet you have 6. So it does not matter if the fluid is properly and evenly distributed or not, you're only going to get enough product out from those machines as what the fluid can flow through the pipes. As such, having 6 fully speed beaconed and moduled machines running is excessive and unnecessary. Even in an extreme case where two pipes worth of fluid is the max you could possibly send up and you need/wanted to have the produced product sent to 6 different areas, you can produce it in two and then split their output between the 6 areas you need. Or even reduce/remove a lot of the speed beacons seems you know they're excessive, anyway.

[aka13]

I don't get why you continue repeating what you say infinitely. It's not that people are too dumb to understand what you say.
Your argument could also be applied to splitters - why have them work by clear and logical rules, when you can simply always have a full belt and balance consumption?

[FuryoftheStars]

I don't get why you continue repeating what you say infinitely. It's not that people are too dumb to understand what you say.
Your argument could also be applied to splitters - why have them work by clear and logical rules, when you can simply always have a full belt and balance consumption?

Because others continue to say infinitely the same thing as if we're too dumb to understand? Two way street, here.

The argument can't be applied to splitters (at least, not in that way) because they already evenly split their input (per lane). That said, if you take a naive approach to using them and just use a splitter off from your belt feed at each machine, you'll still end up with better fed machines at the beginning of the line and starving machines at the end. Obviously to get everything evenly fed, you need to take a different approach to the splitting, or feed more material (which is, interestingly, the same solution as for fluids, eh?).

However, the "fix" to fluids is either a redesign that would require a fair amount of effort and very potentially decrease performance, or to just remove all of the mechanics and make it instantaneously travel through the pipe.

I am absolutely against instantaneous fluid transmission through the pipes. This absolutely does not go with the rest of the game and personally I dislike this approach to solving things.

As for the redesign, I'm also against anything here that results in anything more than minor performance degradation. I'm fairly sure the devs have given this a shot a few times, and obviously it either hasn't been successful or it was taking a lot more time and effort than what anyone was realizing so they decided to prioritize other things. If they do decide at a later time to pick it back up, then great! But otherwise, the issue is actually very easily solved by simply not over provisioning yourself (and the devs have replied saying "then don't do that") or creating a better splitting setup (just like with belts & trains (!)).

[mmmPI]

I don't get why you continue repeating what you say infinitely. It's not that people are too dumb to understand what you say.
Your argument could also be applied to splitters - why have them work by clear and logical rules, when you can simply always have a full belt and balance consumption?

Splitters are dealing with integers quantity. They cannot evenly split 3 item into 2 ways. Splitters mechanics are broken because when i send 3 item i cannot predict which side will end up with 2 and which side will end up with one.

You are right , the argument apply to splitters, it does illustrate very well how the argument is a bad one, thank you.

[aka13]

You can do strawmans all day, I don't care. You both are literal years on my ignore list. My post was targeted towards the general forum audience, so that there is no appearance of a consesus of "old forum members".
If you bothered reading, you'd also have seen, that I agree on "simply produce more to fix your specific setup". It still remains unfun not being able to predict behaviour of fluid systems, as multiple people stated in this topic.

[mmmPI]

You can do strawmans all day, I don't care. You both are literal years on my ignore list. My post was targeted towards the general forum audience, so that there is no appearance of a consesus of "old forum members".

I didn't realized you were purposedly taking a stance you don't believe in for the sake of contradiction.

If you bothered reading, you'd also have seen, that I agree on "simply produce more to fix your specific setup". It still remains unfun not being able to predict behaviour of fluid systems, as multiple people stated in this topic.

Worry not the appearance of no consensus is preserved, by contradicting FuryoftheStars who think the argument do no applies for splitters. I on the contrary think the argument applies to splitters, and demonstrate well why the argument is not good, be it for splitters as you proposed, or for pipes The inpredictability exist for splitters you can't tell which side is going to be sent that 1 iron plate coming from your sushi belt, then you ask for 1 copper plate, it will go in the other direction ? but left or right ?
Worse is if you send 1 copper then 1 iron then 1 copper then 1 iron then 1 copper you don't know will all the copper go the same side and the iron too ? what if in the middle of it you send a plastic bar so it does 1 copper 1 iron 1 copper 1 iron 1 plastic 1 copper 1 iron 1 copper 1 iron. Have you messed up everything ? Should you have done 1 coppr 1 iron 1 copper 1 iron 1 plastic 1 iron 1 copper ?

You don't have to enlightmen just me, since you are ignoring me, you could just answer for the general audience, how the simple and predictible rules for splitters work in this case because to me again that's a good analogy.

I know splitters have filters and that makes it very different to pump, i wouldn't have use them as comparaison you did, but pumps getting filter in 2.0 maybe will help players better managing their pipe networks , who knows .... ^^

[FuryoftheStars]

You can do strawmans all day, I don't care. You both are literal years on my ignore list. My post was targeted towards the general forum audience, so that there is no appearance of a consesus of "old forum members".
If you bothered reading, you'd also have seen, that I agree on "simply produce more to fix your specific setup". It still remains unfun not being able to predict behaviour of fluid systems, as multiple people stated in this topic.

I have no desire to go back through the pages of this thread simply to refresh my memory of what stance each person takes. Your post read as if you were taking the opposite stance, hence I replied accordingly. My overall response would have been worded differently had yours made that clear, but I still would have effectively said the same thing.

[Koub]

[Koub] I doubt there is something new to add to this thread, and people are starting to attack each other, I'm locking this.

[functional]

The only reason they have remained mostly unchanged is because vanilla factorio doesn't actually demand much out of them, thus the limitations rarely get into play for those who don't develop megabases. In standard gameplay, it mostly only appears when someone puts a long chain of pipes between high consumption and production and can't understand why the 40 refineries cannot draw to full capacity from the countless oil wells. Then they go google about the problem to find videos by people who often don't know themselves either how it exactly works.

Wikipedia page does explain the flow, but honestly I never understood it properly until I downloaded Blueprint Lab and started playing with Bobs & Angels playthrough with high throughput requirements.

Ultimately, I think this is one aspect where Factorio failed. Intuitively, you think that fluids work by pressure and hence pressure is enough to make sure that the fluid will travel to the very end at max capacity. In fact, this is also how it really does work too, but not in Factorio. So if the game ever was actually demanding in standard playthrough, to the point where fluid mechanics (and their limitations specifically) come into actual play, the only way to understand the solution is to either google it or figure it out in an extremely unintuitive manner.

Consider for example standard pipes and underground pipes. If you had 10 segments of standard pipes, it will now cut the fluid flow to 1344 or something like that. If you had just underground pipes same distance, it will be 3000 (or was it 6000?) instead. But that doesn't make sense - you intuitively think "there's as much pipe there, right?", because you don't really understand that the underground pipes are connected as single entity. It's very easy to miss that you should be using underground pipes.

Or let's say you understood that, but you don't understand that long distance itself is the problem. Just way too many underground pipes. So you think "let's put a single pump here", right? So you put it at the end, thinking it "pulls" from the long stretch behind it. But it doesn't, the liquid doesn't work that way either. You actually are better off putting it at start of the chain, not the end... but then you might miss what it does at the end, too.

The brutal consequence of making a small s-bend

This is my favorite aspect about the fluid system. Making a small S-bend with two pipes will brutally cut the flow compared to just having a single pipe between every pump. So the only alternative here is to use extremely awkward-looking setup with lot of pumps and pipes going in a circle just to achieve what would be otherwise a tiny bend, but without a significant dropoff in fluid flow.

TLDR

The fluid system is kind of a mess and I really hope that devs would do something about it. I bet it could be more interesting to play around with (mods often just solve it by increasing the throughput significantly), but I guess it's hardcoded to the point where mods cannot really either figure anything interesting around it. For example, increasing pressure level for propagation of the fluid through usage of some reservoirs that use electricity or something. I don't know.

Sorry for the rant, just had to take this off my chest after 2 years already of thinking about this. Seen so many youtubers not understanding at all how the fluid mechanics work and then struggle in modded playthroughs because of this. Even people who are far more experienced than I am.

[xeln4g4]

I have almost 6000 hours on this game, and i think the fluid system work well. Maybe not the best part of the game, but saying "it is a mess" really doesn't sound quite fair. This game is so much open end that when it was designed, back then, i think none could really imagine what people would do with it....

[mmmPI]

The only reason they have remained mostly unchanged is because vanilla factorio doesn't actually demand much out of them,

No it is because making it differently would cost more performance in an area where some players already do not care about realism.

thus the limitations rarely get into play for those who don't develop megabases.

Making megabases is learning how to deal with the game limitation ,it is this perfectly normal to run into limitations of the engine/game.

In standard gameplay, it mostly only appears when someone puts a long chain of pipes between high consumption and production and can't understand why the 40 refineries cannot draw to full capacity from the countless oil wells.

When you make a broken setup it doesn't work, nothing suprising.

Then they go google about the problem to find videos by people who often don't know themselves either how it exactly works.Wikipedia page does explain the flow, but honestly I never understood it properly until I downloaded Blueprint Lab and started playing with Bobs & Angels playthrough with high throughput requirements.

I thought the goal was to figure out solution to the problems you face by yourself at first... if you go onto google it's quite easy to find the wiki that explain pipe throughput, or at least give an indicative table for players.

You seem to be confused between max throughput which is not a problem unless you play modded game , and mods can and will always break the limits (but there are also mods to help) AND the actual thing that confuse players which is junction order in case of lack of fluid.

Ultimately, I think this is one aspect where Factorio failed.

Taking example your difficulty to make high throughput setup with mods is not really convincing me.

Consider for example standard pipes and underground pipes. If you had 10 segments of standard pipes, it will now cut the fluid flow to 1344 or something like that. If you had just underground pipes same distance, it will be 3000 (or was it 6000?) instead. But that doesn't make sense - you intuitively think "there's as much pipe there, right?", because you don't really understand that the underground pipes are connected as single entity. It's very easy to miss that you should be using underground pipes.

Sometimes your intuition is wrong. Learning about it and adapting is part of playing the game. It doesn't necessarily highlight a failure of the game. Especially for the length at which fluid will flow in a pipe. Intuitively you know if you only poor a glass of water in a pipeline, the water will not reach the end of it and stabilize with a 0.00000000001 millimeter level everywhere, you need more water in for it to go further same as in the game.

Or let's say you understood that, but you don't understand that long distance itself is the problem. Just way too many underground pipes. So you think "let's put a single pump here", right? So you put it at the end, thinking it "pulls" from the long stretch behind it. But it doesn't, the liquid doesn't work that way either. You actually are better off putting it at start of the chain, not the end... but then you might miss what it does at the end, too.

That again is a wrong intuition and player mistake, if you take the previous analogy with the pipeline and the glass of water it still make no sense to expect a pump at the end of the pipeline to "pull" liquid from miles away.

The brutal consequence of making a small s-bend
This is my favorite aspect about the fluid system. Making a small S-bend with two pipes will brutally cut the flow compared to just having a single pipe between every pump. So the only alternative here is to use extremely awkward-looking setup with lot of pumps and pipes going in a circle just to achieve what would be otherwise a tiny bend, but without a significant dropoff in fluid flow.

I'm sure if you search a bit more you will find many players that uses other way that what you describe as the only way.

Sorry for the rant, just had to take this off my chest after 2 years already of thinking about this. Seen so many youtubers not understanding at all how the fluid mechanics work and then struggle in modded playthroughs because of this. Even people who are far more experienced than I am.

Many people do not understand gravity it doesn't mean there's something wrong with it =).

You mention a lot the fluid throughput, but you probably realize that "increasing" it in vanilla, say x2 or x10 wouldn't help if modders uses this to increase their requirement in receipe by x2 or x10 or players try to make bases that are x2 or x10 less efficient.

The quantity problem cannot be solved by "adding a little quantity". What is often discussed is a qualitative change, but it would cut on the simulation part, making it less realistic potentially, to simplify the system. Some players do not like this. Making the system "more realistic" would cost more performance, other players don't like it. The current system is a trade off, that some players struggle to understand when using mods ? Yeah , use mods like "fluid must flow" if you are also going to use mods that increase fluid requirements ...

If you play only vanilla, then that's the challenge of the megabase building, to account for such things, that's part of the challenge... like trains having bottlenecks, or belts having limited throughput and so on...

[MeduSalem]

Groundhog day. ^^

The last thread about it which Koub closed only a while ago.

The only reason they have remained mostly unchanged is because vanilla factorio doesn't actually demand much out of them,

No it is because making it differently would cost more performance in an area where some players already do not care about realism.

Actually I would say it is the other way around. They sacrifice performance for the sake of making it more realistic.

In one of their FFs of how to topple the problem they mentioned they could totally have gone through with making each pipe network act like a single large storage tank. Then the producers and consumers would have been just a simple table in the background with producers inputting to the pool and consumers taking from the pool. There would be basically no "flow" simulation at all.

You either then produce enough so all consumers are satisfied and the pool fills up until it is full & the producers stall, or if you don't produce enough and the pool becomes empty the consumers all "starve" equally relative to their consumption.

Because of the simplicity in which you can calculate that it very likely beats the performance of how it is done currently.

They didn't implement that alternative because as far as I remember they couldn't think of a good way to resolve the graphics for the flow directions and some other minor things... like fluids not being able to mix anymore because once the "pool" is "primed" none other can be in there. All stuff that honestly I personally wouldn't have given a damn about. ^^

[functional]

...

You actually ignored so much of the post and provided shoddy reasoning, completely ignoring the fact that the fluid mechanics do not resemble the way it works in real life (how pressure propagates in pipes), you also make an assertion that at the end how I'm supposedly wanting to increase the throughput of the pipes while I quite explicitly state on the contrary, as mods take that approach already.

So, I'm sorry, but this isn't worthwhile comment to even respond to with any depth.

[functional]

I have almost 6000 hours on this game, and i think the fluid system work well. Maybe not the best part of the game, but saying "it is a mess" really doesn't sound quite fair. This game is so much open end that when it was designed, back then, i think none could really imagine what people would do with it....

The "it's a mess" part comes when you actually put it to any significant use, which is when you run into silly situations like how a slight bend requires like ten pumps and pipes or else it severely cuts down your throughput. And of course, it also comes from the fact that beginners and otherwise novice players struggle consistently to understand how it works.

I think it's fair sentiment to have, because not everyone has 6000 hours in this game. Of course I don't really have issues making bases with the system, I'm used to it (besides the absolute disgust over those tiny bends requiring so much work), but I've witnessed too many times when people struggle with it, including experienced players.