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I tried to set up priorities for my oil industries. I thought the setup visible in the attached screenshot should have the pump pushing everything first to the lubricant factory, only leaving liquid for the cracking plant if the former can't take anything right now, but the cracking plant still receives more liquid?

It'll only push as much as it can fit in the lubricant factory(I believe 2?) after that everything else will go to the cracking factory. Maybe another storage tank between the pump and lubricant factory, although when that fills up you'll have the same situation..

Of course. Problem is, the input is way to slow currently (I really need to hook up a few more oil wells), so the lubricant factory pauses a lot, but the cracking plant still gets stuff. I'll try what happens if I add a storage tank.

EDIT: doesn't change a thing. I don't get it...

Possibly a stupid question, but what is the point of the small pumps anyway? Does liquid pressure drop off if you don't have regular pumps?

you can use them to move liquids in storage reservoirs to other places, and flush all liquids out of a system without rebuilding everything.

Sander Buruma wrote:you can use them to move liquids in storage reservoirs to other places, and flush all liquids out of a system without rebuilding everything.

Ahh, so I can't just connect a storage tank to another storage tank and the incoming flow to the first one also fill the second one? I have to add a pump somewhere to "suck" it out?

they will level out, you have to add a pump to empty a tank.

I don't know, why not using the wiki: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... Small_Pump

Because some sections of the wiki are ridiculously unclear. But thanks.

elmarko wrote:Because some sections of the wiki are ridiculously unclear. But thanks.

Agreed. But we can all as a community edit the wiki to make it clearer for ourselves and others.

Anyone any idea on my problem?

Can you post a picture of the new setup?
You said you added a storage tank after the pump but you still get heavy oil in the cracking plant? That sounds like the pump isn't fast enough, which is strange because you said the output isn't coming too fast anyway...

We can. And I may well do that, maybe with some nice images with all sorts of arrows on showing where things would be expected to go.

This is what works for me: No idea why your setup isn't working. Do you have a storage tank for lubricant?

could it be about the distances? the closest chemical plant gets more liquid because the oil arrives before it arrives at the pump?

Sorry for not responding, didn't really have time for factorio the last few days...

Layout is attached again. Oil comes through the tank my character is looking at, chemical plant to the south is creating lubricant (and you can see the tank attached at the output, which is NOT full), chemical plant in the east is cracking. Added a second pump, didn't make any difference: lubricant plant still gets heavy oil at about half the speed than the cracking plant. I guess I'll simply rebuild it somewhere else and hope for the best. (I was planning to move everything anyways, but wanted to make sure I got the principles right before)

I noticed in my factory that liquids are allocated strangely. I have 6 refineries in a row connected to one oil pipe coming from a storage tank. And the second refinery recieves the most oil. The first and third are somewhat equal second. Refinery 4, 5 and 6 only get oil when the others can't keep up with.
I would have expected the first refinery to receive first and so on...

A bit more to the north, I have build 3 plastic bar chemical plants in a row on one petrolium gas line coming from a storage tank. In that case, the last platic bar chemical plant receives the petrolium gas first.

I think the game-physics of the pipes will be matter of much further discussion. In my eyes it isn't finished yet and needs some tweaking.

For example: make a closed circle of water containing out of tanks, pipes and some small pumps only. Then fill this up with some water from the lakes. Then make experiments with that setup and see what happens.

My current impression: there is more than just pressure and volume.

Before trying to do any experiments, you should wait for 10.1, where a bug with disappearing liquids has been fixed.