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[Resolved] Steam engines and underground interaction

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 2:46 pm
by Narc
I'm not entirely sure how I managed to get my steam engines in this state, but I did manage to make a save where the bug is present.

Briefly, if you check the steam engines directly above the player (bottom row of generators), the middle one says "Water temperature: 100" but "Performance" and "Available performance" both 0. See also the steam engine to the right of that one, which has been broken and replaced and is reporting water temperature of 0.

Further note the row above those, which has steam engines reporting water temperature 15.

Image
http://www.narc.ro/tmp/bugreport-steam.zip

This design of powerplant has otherwise worked fine for me in the past -- four boilers are enough to fully heat three steam engines and provide enough excess heat for pipe transport; what I've changed from previous unbugged cases is that there are now underground pipes between the boilers and steam engines, feeding directly to the steam engines. I have no idea if that's causing the oddity, but it seems a likely enough culprit.

...in fact, since I thought of that, I just checked: if you break the underground pipes linking the three inactive rows of steam engines (top three rows, in other words), the bottom two rows start working as expected; replacing the underground pipes will eventually trigger the bug again (took about 1 minute or so to show up for me).

Re: Steam engines and underground pipes interact poorly

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:35 pm
by kovarex
Hi, thank you for the report,
I checked the save and I identified the problem.
The problem is, that you have only one pump, and most of the water is consumed with temperature 15 by the top engines (it doesn't generate any electricity this way).

When I added two more pumps, it started to work as you would expect.

Re: Steam engines and underground pipes interact poorly

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:44 pm
by Xinvoker
kovarex wrote:Hi, thank you for the report,
I checked the save and I identified the problem.
The problem is, that you have only one pump, and most of the water is consumed with temperature 15 by the top engines (it doesn't generate any electricity this way).

When I added two more pumps, it started to work as you would expect.
Μay I suggest a pressure tooltip so we know if we more pumps are needed.

Re: Steam engines and underground pipes interact poorly

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 5:23 pm
by Narc
kovarex wrote:[...]The problem is, that you have only one pump, and most of the water is consumed with temperature 15 by the top engines (it doesn't generate any electricity this way). When I added two more pumps, it started to work as you would expect.
Neat! I'm with Xinvoker on this one -- if pressure exists, it should be possible to tell when you're running low. But thank you kindly for looking into it for me.

Re: [Resolved] Steam engines and underground interaction

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 6:17 pm
by UnrealDiego
The stream in the pipes actually gets thinner if the pressure is low (If you have some windows on some pipes, you can see it). But a number showing the actually pressure would be really useful for optimizing.