A Purpose for Fluid Wagons

[TheCoolerVanessa]

TL;DR
pipes should be nerfed to give fluid wagons a purpose

Why?
Fluid wagons are pretty useless.
Currently, there is no downside to just running a huge pipe from a to b. Yes you need intermittent pumps, but you need to run power to the pump jacks anyway, so that's barely an inconvenience.
10 minutes into the game, I transport my water with pipes.
3 hours into the game, I transport my oil with pipes.
500 hours in, would you believe it, pipes are still by far the best option.

What?

My Proposal: Leakage
What if pipes aren't 100% air tight? Let's say, a pipe loses 5% of its contents every 100 meters. This means that a pipe of 500 meters will leak about 23% of the fluid. This doesn't invalidate the approach of using pipes for everything, but it does incentivise using trains for longer distances if you care about efficiency. If you don't like trains, you can eat the losses.

Bonus: Expensive Pipes
What if some fluids are too dangerous to be transported in mere iron pipes? What if you needed to make special pipes, for example using steeel and copper, for transporting sulfuric acid and the Space Age fluids?
Of course this wouldn't impact late game players much. At that point most people would transport their fluids in heat pipes if they had to.
This does however incentivize using trains to supply uranium mines. You might even see trains on Vulcanus and trains for more than just scrap on Fulgora.

[Harkonnen]

+1 also that "leakage" might make non-steam/water pipes a good biter attraction via pollution

[angramania]

Each has its own purpose. Pipes are good for spaghetti/bus bases, fluid wagons for city blocks. There is no need to force either way over another.

[sarge945]

My main gripe with the new fluid system in 2.0 has been that it's essentially made pipes have infinite throughput (obviously it's still limited, but it's effectively infinite for all practical purposes).

I feel like the Factorio developers should take a page out of Satisfactory's book and limit pipe throughput significantly, with multiple pipe tiers available (similar to belts).

Throughput essentially doesn't matter at all right now for fluids, and I feel like it results in an oversimplified and unbalanced system.

This would potentially add a lot of depth similar to belts, by encouraging things like pipe buses and networks, using pumps to redirect fluid around when throughput is limited, etc.

Satisfactory's fluid system is really deep, and every time I play it I get annoyed at how basic and barebones Factorio's fluids have become. Sure, the old system had it's problems, but they threw out the baby with the bathwater in my opinion.

Pipes in Factorio 2.0 are essentially mindless, which feels extremely out of place for a game with so much depth and so many different variables and parameters to consider when building.

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah so I will just say it again: Bring back 1.1 fluid system.

[angramania]

My main gripe with the new fluid system in 2.0 has been that it's essentially made pipes have infinite throughput (obviously it's still limited, but it's effectively infinite for all practical purposes).

Really? For all practical purposes? Lets take very practical purpose from this topic - transport fluids over long distances. It is infinite until distance exceed 320. After that it just stops flow. Oups, no infinite throughput for this purpose. If you want to transport further, then you need pumps, which have limited throughput. And if task is more complex than "transport everything from A to B", then you need to add logic to pumps and tanks. So there is already "This would potentially add a lot of depth similar to belts, by encouraging things like pipe buses and networks, using pumps to redirect fluid around when throughput is limited, etc."
By the way, do you know that Factorio has valves prototypes which allow quite interesting design? I would suggest to try mods like Nullius if you want to play with complex fluid flows. And after that try to guess, why valves are absent in vanilla.

I will just say it again: Bring back 1.1 fluid system.

Yeah, it is so "fun" when fluid flow is laggy, unpredictable and depends on order of pipe placing. No separation of producer and consumers, only direct connections. Let's limit design flexibility for all just to cater to the outdated habits of a select few!

[sarge945]

Really? For all practical purposes? Lets take very practical purpose from this topic - transport fluids over long distances. It is infinite until distance exceed 320. After that it just stops flow. Oups, no infinite throughput for this purpose. If you want to transport further, then you need pumps, which have limited throughput. And if task is more complex than "transport everything from A to B", then you need to add logic to pumps and tanks. So there is already "This would potentially add a lot of depth similar to belts, by encouraging things like pipe buses and networks, using pumps to redirect fluid around when throughput is limited, etc."

2 problems with this:

1. pump speed of 1200/s is enough for most purposes I've found. In a significant number of cases players who aren't megabasing are going to create their entire refinery before ever running into the pump fluid limit. The only area of gameplay where most players will ever experience pump throughput limits is - ironically - filling fluid wagons, because you're inherently limited to 3 pumps per wagon - which supports the OP's point and further solidifies long pipe networks as the dominant strategy.
2. Even if you ARE somehow throughput limited for whatever reason due to pumps, you can literally just chain pumps in parallel, so the fluid limit may as well not exist.

As long as the pipes themselves are essentially infinite, it really doesn't matter with regards to pumps, because there's no limiting factor on your number of pumps.

Now you could argue "adding throughput limits to pipes has the same problem, you can just run parallel pipes", and that's true, but doing so adds a significant space penalty because the entire pipe network has to be doubled in order to double the throughput, and that can cause all sorts of complex issues with routing it to machinery, which isn't the case if you just have to add a few pumps next to each other.

Instead of giving condescending answers and acting like I'm stupid, perhaps you should consider responding to the actual points raised.

Basically, ALL of the complexity in Factorio related to Fluids has to do with "fluid handling" - routing excess byproducts, balancing things like oil production, etc. There's virtually nothing related to fluid logistics. I'm arguing that fluid logistics should matter as much as fluid routing, and the really interesting and fun pipe logistics in Satisfactory is a good example of why it's so important.

The simple fact of the matter is - jank and lag aside - the fluid system in 1.1 required BOTH an understanding of fluid handling (which is the same as what we have now) AND had inherent limits on pipe throughput to the point where people did things like design specific ratios of boilers to offshore pumps. None of that exists anymore, and I (and many others) consider that a regression in gameplay. They have taken something that was complex and interesting (albeit janky) and basically replaced it with nothing, rather than fixing it. And that sucks.

Simply dismissing the criticism because "the 1.1 fluid system was jank!" isn't really arguing in good faith. Literally nobody is trying to return to the 1.1 fluid system exactly. What we want is a fluid system that *feels* like the 1.1 system without the jank and the weird inconsistent flow rates and such.

In 1.1, routing fluid over long distances mattered. Now it really doesn't. Sure, every so often you'll need to add a pump, but that feels like a hacky bandaid solution and it won't be particularly important the majority of the time.

The reason I like a tiered pipe throughput approach is because it reflects the same progression system as belts, and it is relatively simple and straightforward to understand - if you want more throughput, use stronger pipes, or run a large complex pipe network. Both of these come with tradeoffs while being simple to understand.

While things like pipe throughput can easily be added via mods, unfortunately without engine work it's going to be impossible to stop fluids from essentially teleporting across the map, as they do now. As long as we can essentially transport infinite fluids across the map instantly with pipes, there's no way the non-instant, throughput-limited fluid wagons are ever going to compete.

[angramania]

1. pump speed of 1200/s is enough for most purposes I've found.

Funny statement in topic about transportation of large volumes over long distance.

In a significant number of cases players who aren't megabasing are going to create their entire refinery before ever running into the pump fluid limit.

And in 1.1 in a significant number of cases players who aren't megabasing are going to create their entire refinery before ever running into the pipe fluid limit. So what?

The only area of gameplay where most players will ever experience pump throughput limits is - ironically - filling fluid wagons, because you're inherently limited to 3 pumps per wagon - which supports the OP's point and further solidifies long pipe networks as the dominant strategy.

As I said before, fluid wagons are for different style of bases. Pump throughput means little there.

Now you could argue "adding throughput limits to pipes has the same problem, you can just run parallel pipes", and that's true, but doing so adds a significant space penalty because the entire pipe network has to be doubled in order to double the throughput, and that can cause all sorts of complex issues with routing it to machinery, which isn't the case if you just have to add a few pumps next to each other.

Are you sure this argument isn’t actually working against you?

I'm arguing that fluid logistics should matter as much as fluid routing, and the really interesting and fun pipe logistics in Satisfactory is a good example of why it's so important.

So create mod, which realize this view. And see how popular it will become.

The simple fact of the matter is - jank and lag aside - the fluid system in 1.1 required BOTH an understanding of fluid handling (which is the same as what we have now) AND had inherent limits on pipe throughput to the point where people did things like design specific ratios of boilers to offshore pumps. None of that exists anymore, and I (and many others) consider that a regression in gameplay. They have taken something that was complex and interesting (albeit janky) and basically replaced it with nothing, rather than fixing it. And that sucks.

So you even do not understand why it was 20 boilers per offshore pump in 1.0 and how exactly this limit was shifted in 2.0. You just remember the trick, but without real comprehension. The main reason behind all this whining about “bring back 1.1” is basically people who just want the tricks they once learned to matter again, so they can feel superior to beginners without having to put in the effort to learn anything new.

In 1.1, routing fluid over long distances mattered. Now it really doesn't. Sure, every so often you'll need to add a pump, but that feels like a hacky bandaid solution and it won't be particularly important the majority of the time.

In 1.1 players put pumps every 10 pipes, in 2.0 they can do this every 320 pipes. Let's return 1.1!!!

As long as we can essentially transport infinite fluids across the map instantly with pipes, there's no way the non-instant, throughput-limited fluid wagons are ever going to compete.

Only while it is trivial task: "transport all volume of fluid from A to B and only to B over a flat terrain".