Factorio Forums

Would it be possible that you guys increased the Underground Pipe gap from 9 to 10 tiles?

I was trying to route an underground pipe to cross 2 Reactors which together have 10 tiles. But then I noticed that the Underground Pipes only able to bridge as far as odd 9 tiles (which is a strange arbitrary number to begin with).
I don't think that increasing the gap by 1 to an even 10 would throw off the balance at all... but rather it would allow for some more interesting builds in Nuclear Plants.

Actual value in prototype for underground pipe is 10.
It's the same with underground belts. There is a 1-off difference between undeground distance and prototype.
By default undeground belt has 5 as max distance and that gives actual 4 undeground pieces. Game behaves like one of the ends is counted for length but not the other.
It was a bit puzzling for me few times but it seemed deliberate so I didn't try to bug report it

Well okay... I was talking about the actual "gap" being 10 tiles. xD


If that means that the prototype would need to be changed from 10 to 11 tiles because that's how how the game engine is calculating the max distance then that's fine for me.

Back in the dark ages when underground pipes only went 5 tiles like underground belts, when the devs decided to bump it to 10 it was suggested a few times to go to 11 so that old designs would still work with half their underground pipes removed. Sadly they didn't take the bait

Now that the nuclear reactors have popped-in, and knowing there's incentive to stack them to benefit from more efficiency, it gets legitimate to suggest such an evolution : until 0.14, except for the silo, you could have an underground pipe cross two lines of any producing machine (assembling machine, chem plants) with a belt and inserters in between.

*edit* corrected belt=> pipe

10 tile gap instead of 9 would also be convenient for 4 belt 2 gap main bus designs

Also, 10/12 as the gap and total length is a lot prettier in terms of matching other ratios than 9/11 currently.

Koub wrote:Now that the nuclear reactors have popped-in, and knowing there's incentive to stack them to benefit from more efficiency, it gets legitimate to suggest such an evolution : until 0.14, except for the silo, you could have an underground belt cross two lines of any producing machine (assembling machine, chem plants) with a belt and inserters in between.

Huh? Most productions machines are 3x3's and have been since I started in 0.12. I think I have the wrong image in my head compared to what you are describing.

Not at home so I can't make a screenshot but this is what it sounds like you are describing.
Each letter is a single tile. U = Underground Belt; I = Inserter; A=assembler.
UIAAAAAAIU
UIAAAAAAIU
UIAAAAAAIU

That doesn't work...With the new blue belt in 0.15.7+ that will work.
Currently I have to design them like this for pre-0.15.7:
UIAAAUUIAAAU
UIAAAUUIAAAU
UIAAAUUIAAAU

[edit]
Making the belts 5,8,11 would be ideal. To allow for this:

You seem to have mixed up discussion about belts and pipes.

Yeah sorry, i wrote "belt" instead of "pipe" in one place, and the result didn't make sense. Corrected.

sparr wrote:Also, 10/12 as the gap and total length is a lot prettier in terms of matching other ratios than 9/11 currently.

True. Trying to make perfectly aligned underground pipeline + power poles blueprints just about causes me OCD.

+1

Simple request/balancing suggestion, and yes, I know a lot of mods have already done it, but still.
With the nuclear reactors at their most efficient configuration, they're set up in a 2 by n row. This is 10 tiles wide. The underground pipe is just 1 tile too short in range from bridging this, which keeps you from generating steam on one side, and using pipes to bring it to turbines on the other side. It would simplify nuclear plants a lot if you were able to sneak under a generator row with an underground pipe - and that requires a range extention of just one tile. You've done it for the underground belts, so why not for the pipes?

Aeternus wrote:It would simplify nuclear plants a lot

That is a bad reason, the devs like to force you to think and build complex designs.

DaveMcW wrote:

Aeternus wrote:It would simplify nuclear plants a lot

That is a bad reason, the devs like to force you to think and build complex designs.

I don't think that it would make things a lot easier, but instead open up some possibilities.

DaveMcW wrote:

Aeternus wrote:It would simplify nuclear plants a lot

That is a bad reason, the devs like to force you to think and build complex designs.

If this is true, then why did they extend the red and blue underground belts? I suppose "simplify" was the wrong word though, it'd allow for a design with steam generation on one end of the reactors, and steam consumption on the other. I would consider that a good thing.