Thruster fluid behavior

[Adam.Podstavka]

Split off of 117703

[2.0.32] Hi everyone, several hours I am trying to figure out those freaking thrusters. I have 4 issues currently with them, first time using them in my life btw.
Must say though that in about 10 years of playing Factorio this is first game breaking bug for me, so I try to stay calm


1) UI does not match game mechanics - visual fluid markings do not correspond with how the game actually behaves. This is confusing, as there are 4 input/output points on a thruster, 2 marked as oxidizer and 2 as fuel, but all 4 work (or currently do not properly work) for both

2) fluid mixing/replacing - as in the ThrusterFluidMix.gif, this was my first time connecting thrusters and I wanted to do the logical thing - I got fuel connected to left thruster to upper fuel joint, so I wanted to connect oxidant to the right one to upper water joint, as it was close by and easy.. (then I wanted to figure out how to connect fuel to right and water to left one, before I even knew the thrusters transfer fluid with each other, I though I would need to plug them all in separately)

3) behavior is inconsistent - this makes the issue even worse, as the fluid mixing is inconsistent. Sometimes I construct same layout with different results - see attached videos, when once fuel got replaced by oxidants, once it was not - and I did the same thing.

4) not filled thruster - when used 2 thrusters besides touching each other, only the left one is being filled, the right one works only as a fluid transfer medium - gif attached - NotFilledRightThruster.gif (note: this was confirmed during my first flight, only left thruster was working)

And when I try to fly it I should worry that it will switch mid-flight as others say?
It would be greatly appreciated if this is fixed to at least work consistently, so that we can build around that. Never expected bug this big in Factorio, such great reputation it has

Edit: adding a savegame file.

[Zaflis]

Did you read Raiguard's post just before yours? Basically connecting thrusters together like that is not allowed anymore, it just won't work by design. Fluid mixing is no longer a thing, if there is 2 different fluids then the one that is lower amount is erased from existence.

[Adam.Podstavka]

Did you read Raiguard's post just before yours? Basically connecting thrusters together like that is not allowed anymore, it just won't work by design. Fluid mixing is no longer a thing, if there is 2 different fluids then the one that is lower amount is erased from existence.

Hi Zaflis, thank you for noting that - I did read it, however apparently not properly as I didn't understand it fully.

The fluid replacing is still an issue though, the inconsistency of it's behavior as well and same is the UI visual representation not matching game mechanics of joints. Should I post 75% of my post as a new bug then?

[Zaflis]

Did you read Raiguard's post just before yours? Basically connecting thrusters together like that is not allowed anymore, it just won't work by design. Fluid mixing is no longer a thing, if there is 2 different fluids then the one that is lower amount is erased from existence.

Hi Zaflis, thank you for noting that - I did read it, however apparently not properly as I didn't understand it fully.

The fluid replacing is still an issue though, the inconsistency of it's behavior as well and same is the UI visual representation not matching game mechanics of joints. Should I post 75% of my post as a new bug then?

As you want, but at least i didn't really understand your message fully. Also they may consider fluid mixing a resolved topic already, as something that is not part of the game anymore. If you see any mixing, fix the setup to prevent mixed connections. In your case that is already a mixed one that requires fixing in order to be a useable design, as right now it is not.
1) How doesn't it match game mechanics, what are you expecting and what is confusing in more specific detail?
2) This is how fluid works in all buildings/turrets/fluid-tanks/whatever, that all inputs that have same fluid icon are connected together.
3) As said, fluid with lower amount will get erased. You will get different results based on starting amount of fluids in 2 systems, and the rate at which they get fluid inserted in. You didn't tell those amounts or specific tests.
4) This, your first gif is actually one i can agree with. Why does right side thruster remain completely empty when other thruster has 2 types of fluid in it. You could file that as a bug. Include also savefile.

[Muche]

4) This, your first gif is actually one i can agree with. Why does right side thruster remain completely empty when other thruster has 2 types of fluid in it. You could file that as a bug. Include also savefile.

The behaviour shown in NotFilledRightThruster.gif is correct tho.

The fuel goes from chemplant to left thruster's fuel pipe, then to right thruster's oxidizer pipe.
The oxidizer goes from chemplant to right thruster's fuel pipe, then to left thruster's oxidizer pipe.

So left thruster has fuel in its fuel pipe and oxidizer in its oxidizer pipe.
Right thruster has fuel in its oxidizer pipe and oxidizer in its fuel pipe.

[Adam.Podstavka]

As you want, but at least i didn't really understand your message fully. Also they may consider fluid mixing a resolved topic already, as something that is not part of the game anymore. If you see any mixing, fix the setup to prevent mixed connections. In your case that is already a mixed one that requires fixing in order to be a useable design, as right now it is not.

Thank you for further input. Sure I will do my best to separate the issues and explain them as clearly as I can.
In my case it's not mixing issue (as you said mixing was disabled), but swapping or replacing fluid issue.

1) How doesn't it match game mechanics, what are you expecting and what is confusing in more specific detail?

This one is easy - joint icons do not match behavior - you see oxidant icon, you don't expect fuel can flow through this, right? I rest of game I don't know of any other examples where there would be fluid icon on structure joint and it would accept/pour out another fluid.

2) This is how fluid works in all buildings/turrets/fluid-tanks/whatever, that all inputs that have same fluid icon are connected together.

well not here, there are no same fluid icons are near each other in my thrusters - oxidant joint is near fuel joint in both cases where joints are adjacent

3) As said, fluid with lower amount will get erased. You will get different results based on starting amount of fluids in 2 systems, and the rate at which they get fluid inserted in. You didn't tell those amounts or specific tests.

same thing here - why would I expect fuel going out or in from oxidant joint?

This was my first point about UI visual representation not matching game behavior. If there is a joint allowing both liquids, shouldn't it be represented visually as well? like (oxidant drop slash fuel drop) image. Or do you consider current state of thruster joints fuel icons as consistent with rest of the game?

[Adam.Podstavka]

4) This, your first gif is actually one i can agree with. Why does right side thruster remain completely empty when other thruster has 2 types of fluid in it. You could file that as a bug. Include also savefile.

The behaviour shown in NotFilledRightThruster.gif is correct tho.

The fuel goes from chemplant to left thruster's fuel pipe, then to right thruster's oxidizer pipe.
The oxidizer goes from chemplant to right thruster's fuel pipe, then to left thruster's oxidizer pipe.

So left thruster has fuel in its fuel pipe and oxidizer in its oxidizer pipe.
Right thruster has fuel in its oxidizer pipe and oxidizer in its fuel pipe.

Hi Muche, I see it incorrect in 2 ways:
1st - as corresponding joints (pipes in your description) of both adjacent thrusters do not touch, why there would be any transfer of liquids? At least visually, fuel joint from left thruster is adjacent to oxidant joint of right thruster and vice versa.

2nd - if this is just a visual bug of wrong fluid labels on the joints, and all 4 joints of the thrusters are intended to work with both fluids, then why is left thruster filled with both fluids and right thruster is kept completely empty?

[Muche]

I would categorize fluids-related entities as follows:
1) outputs fluid - output of boiler & heat exchanger, offshore pump, pumpjack, outputs of chemical plant, oil refinery, assembling machines 2 & 3
2) accepts some fluids only, one way - inputs of chemical plant, oil refinery, assembling machines 2 & 3
3) accepts all fluids, one way - pump
4) accepts all fluids, two way, one fluid - pipes, storage tank, water input of boiler & heat exchanger, steam engine & turbine, mining drills on uranium ore, fluid wagon, flamethrower turret
5) accepts all fluids, two way, two fluids - thruster, electromagnetic plant (depending on the recipe)

Note: routing, e.g., lava through boilers, turbines, drills works (in the sense lava is transported to the other side of the entity).
This also isn't shown in the UI. And entities of course do not work.
Thruster is no different. It will pass through the fluids it gets and work only if the fluids are the correct ones (and in the correct pipe).

This seems to be the core issue here.
You are expecting the UI fluid mark to act as a filter, whereas it just marks the fluid the entity will work with.
The pump seems to be the outlier here. Its Alt-mode fluid visualization actually means a filter.

[Adam.Podstavka]

I would categorize fluids-related entities as follows:
1) outputs fluid - output of boiler & heat exchanger, offshore pump, pumpjack, outputs of chemical plant, oil refinery, assembling machines 2 & 3
2) accepts some fluids only, one way - inputs of chemical plant, oil refinery, assembling machines 2 & 3
3) accepts all fluids, one way - pump
4) accepts all fluids, two way, one fluid - pipes, storage tank, water input of boiler & heat exchanger, steam engine & turbine, mining drills on uranium ore, fluid wagon, flamethrower turret
5) accepts all fluids, two way, two fluids - thruster, electromagnetic plant (depending on the recipe)

Note: routing, e.g., lava through boilers, turbines, drills works (in the sense lava is transported to the other side of the entity).
This also isn't shown in the UI. And entities of course do not work.
Thruster is no different. It will pass through the fluids it gets and work only if the fluids are the correct ones (and in the correct pipe).

This seems to be the core issue here.
You are expecting the UI fluid mark to act as a filter, whereas it just marks the fluid the entity will work with.
The pump seems to be the outlier here. Its Alt-mode fluid visualization actually means a filter.

Thank you Muche for explanation. As I didn't come across 5) in my gameplay I did not encounters this issue before.
For 5) the Alt or hover-over UI fluid icon representation does not work consistently with rest of the game, as there are 2 possible fluids mentioned.

However I still have some issues with the mechanics. You can check the video attached and explain why I cannot input fuel anymore, after I purposefully messed up with my finally somewhat working setup. I has 80 seconds, but you can check last 20 seconds to see that even though I try to pump fuel into previously detached thruster, water keeps appearing from the joint, which, before the video I used for fuel input...

I know I have not that much experience with factorio, and especially minimal with Space age, but please don't tell me this is how this game should work in your opinion.

EDIT: I am also adding 2 save files - older with working setup, and than the newer one with seemingly unfixable issue (well removing the broken thruster and starting over should fix it) - just in case you want to waste your time playing with this.

[Muche]

For 5) the Alt or hover-over UI fluid icon representation does not work consistently with rest of the game, as there are 2 possible fluids mentioned.

As I noted, it works consistently with the exception of pump. Everywhere else it's an indication of which fluid the machine works with, not which fluid can enter the machine's pipe.

However I still have some issues with the mechanics. You can check the video attached and explain why I cannot input fuel anymore, after I purposefully messed up with my finally somewhat working setup. I has 80 seconds, but you can check last 20 seconds to see that even though I try to pump fuel into previously detached thruster, water keeps appearing from the joint, which, before the video I used for fuel input...

This is due to the pump preventing fluid mixing. As there is oxidizer present in the pipeline, it will not output fuel into it.

Removing the extra pipes outside the thruster will still leave with some oxidizer within the thruster's internal pipe (connected to ports indicated in the UI by fuel).
This is the whole point of the topic 117703 Thruster swapping Fuel and Oxidizer (mixing/fluid).
That this internal pipe is not shown and in some cases it's not intuitive it still contains some fluid.
As a dev mentioned there, it will be updated in version 2.1.

As noted in that topic, the solution is to clear pipelines of unwanted fluid - connect an external pipe to thruster's port to get access to that internal pipe, click on the pipe, then in the Pipeline contents you'll see all fluids.
The ones with zero amount are generated by entities that interact with that fluid, i.e. thruster's fuel pipeline will show zero fuel, thruster's oxidizer pipeline will show zero oxidizer. Click the unwanted fluid's button and flush it out the pipeline.

[Adam.Podstavka]

For 5) the Alt or hover-over UI fluid icon representation does not work consistently with rest of the game, as there are 2 possible fluids mentioned.

As I noted, it works consistently with the exception of pump. Everywhere else it's an indication of which fluid the machine works with, not which fluid can enter the machine's pipe.

Thanks for the further insights. I still cannot understand your pump exception note. In my case pump never has any fluid icon, only an arrow at the output mark to see which direction it is supposed to pump any fluid which goes from any fluid container adjacent to its input tile. So with the pump the only inconsistency I see is the missing fluid icon compared to another entities containing fluids, however I don't see any need for that.

Thruster is a different story. As you can see on the thruster in my videos, there is still fuel icon over it's joint/hidden pipe tile, even though oxidizer is apparently stored there. So to me this is clear inconsistency - the icon everywhere else in game means either that the fluid is the only one allowed at marked tile, or that it is actually present in the structure at that tile. In case of a thruster (+ I don't know yet about the electromagnetic plant) the fluid icon shows neither. In my eyes this is the only inconsistency with what the small fluid icons represent.

However I still have some issues with the mechanics. You can check the video attached and explain why I cannot input fuel anymore, after I purposefully messed up with my finally somewhat working setup. I has 80 seconds, but you can check last 20 seconds to see that even though I try to pump fuel into previously detached thruster, water keeps appearing from the joint, which, before the video I used for fuel input...

This is due to the pump preventing fluid mixing. As there is oxidizer present in the pipeline, it will not output fuel into it.

Removing the extra pipes outside the thruster will still leave with some oxidizer within the thruster's internal pipe (connected to ports indicated in the UI by fuel).
This is the whole point of the topic 117703 Thruster swapping Fuel and Oxidizer (mixing/fluid).
That this internal pipe is not shown and in some cases it's not intuitive it still contains some fluid.
As a dev mentioned there, it will be updated in version 2.1.

As noted in that topic, the solution is to clear pipelines of unwanted fluid - connect an external pipe to thruster's port to get access to that internal pipe, click on the pipe, then in the Pipeline contents you'll see all fluids.
The ones with zero amount are generated by entities that interact with that fluid, i.e. thruster's fuel pipeline will show zero fuel, thruster's oxidizer pipeline will show zero oxidizer. Click the unwanted fluid's button and flush it out the pipeline.

Yeah that point about hidden pipes at joints of the thruster I was still missing. Thank you for explaining it in a way that I finally understood it. And having the option to flush it when putting a tile near it is great, thanks for that tip as well.

Not as important point, still don't get your point about pumps preventing mixing. I understood fluid mixing was removed since v2.0.16 , so pumps have nothing to do with that, unless you mean something else than mixing, right?

[Muche]

I still cannot understand your pump exception note. In my case pump never has any fluid icon, only an arrow at the output mark to see which direction it is supposed to pump any fluid which goes from any fluid container adjacent to its input tile. So with the pump the only inconsistency I see is the missing fluid icon compared to another entities containing fluids, however I don't see any need for that.

Thruster is a different story. As you can see on the thruster in my videos, there is still fuel icon over it's joint/hidden pipe tile, even though oxidizer is apparently stored there. So to me this is clear inconsistency - the icon everywhere else in game means either that the fluid is the only one allowed at marked tile, or that it is actually present in the structure at that tile. In case of a thruster (+ I don't know yet about the electromagnetic plant) the fluid icon shows neither. In my eyes this is the only inconsistency with what the small fluid icons represent.

A pump allows to set a filter which fluids the pump is allowed to pump through.

I'd encourage you to try other mentioned entities.
For example, connect an offshore pump directly to a row of steam engines, add a pipe at the end and see that the water flows through them even though engines indicate steam.
Or connect some non-water fluid to the input of a boiler. Same as thruster, the fluids flow through it.

126954-FluidsPassthrough.jpg (189.27 KiB) Viewed 497 times

Indeed, there is a slight difference with what a UI fluid icon means.
Next to a single blue arrow it indeed means only the indicated fluid will come in/out.
Next to a double blue arrow it also means that only the indicated fluid is meaningful for that entity, but there is a second pipe somewhere on the other side of the entity and the fluid will pass through.

Not as important point, still don't get your point about pumps preventing mixing. I understood fluid mixing was removed since v2.0.16 , so pumps have nothing to do with that, unless you mean something else than mixing, right?

Before v2.0.16, it was possible to have more fluid types in the pipeline at the same time. One of them would be shown and used, the other would be invisible.
Once the shown one is used down to zero amount, "suddenly" the other fluid showns up everywhere, even though it was disconnected from the original source ages ago.
Now only one fluid remains, the other is removed.

Pumps prevent pipelines mixing. If a pump wants to pump water, but there is already steam in the destination pipeline, it won't pump the water.
Pipelines mixing is also somewhat prevented on the ground when building pipes manually (an error "Cannot connect systems with different fluids" shows up).
Building via ghosts+robots or on the platform skips that check. So some players' first experience with mixing fluids in pipelines is on the platform and is exacerbated by thrusters' two internal pipes.

[Adam.Podstavka]

Oh wow, that helps a lot. Thank you Muche for sharing your knowledge so thoroughly! I had no idea entities like steam engine can pass through water.. I knew they can consume+passthrough steam, similar to uranian ore mines with sulfuric acid, but all this allowing other-than-required liquid pass-through mechanic is new to me.

Fluid mixing sounds like it could have caused some serious headache

I am curious what will be the changes in 2.1 regarding the fluids. My approach would be (with my limited Factorio knowledge, with only 500 hours, and 80+% of them 5+ years ago):
1) hidden pipes at joints would flush all their liquid when not connected,
2) then I would make double icons where multiple liquids are accepted to be used in the entity and
3) I would allow mixing again Last one is only partially joke - wherever mixing would happen, I would create new kind of liquid - unusable mixed liquid, good only for flushing. For that not to be too annoying, ghost construction would not work where mixing would occur due to placement if there are already liquids present (I understand from bluepring itself you cannot tell if mixing would occur, as it depends what is already placed where blueprint is applied) So the check which is there for manual placement, would be there for construction bot placement. Blueprint of pipe or any fluid entity which would cause mixing at time of construction, the ghost, would be normally placed, but would not be constructed by bots.

But anyway, it's not that important for me now, as I use the knowledge you shared with me to play happily in current state.

I will not raise any bug reports right now, will wait until 2.1 and then see what devs have in store for us

Have a great time and thanks again a ton!
Adamos