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Not sure if this is a bug or a feature so for now Im going to refrain from posting this on bug reports.

I was trying to make emptying and filling a liquid wagon as fast as possible so I put pumps on both sides of a liquid wagon. 3 on one side and 3 on the other side. However, only pumps on one side seemed to be working no matter how I arranged them.

How many pumps am I supposed to be able to use for filling and emptying a liquid wagon?

Screenshot of an optimal wagon filling/emptying setup would be appreciated.

Pumps work perfectly fine from both sides of the wagon.

However only one pump can connect to each of 3 liquid tanks that the wagon contains, no matter if you're attempting this from the same or different sides.

So using 6 pumps will not work. Using 2 from one side, and 1 from another will work perfectly fine - for as long as they connect to different tanks.

To make the transfer very fast, connect each segment of the liquid wagon to it's own storage tank via a pump. You can also chain pumps (but don't use pipes in between). It should only take a 2-3 seconds to drain/fill the wagon that way.

Edit: Added screenshots

Looking good! Wow. that is much faster than what I had going on.

I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

steinio wrote:I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

If you don't do that, the unloading is more more slower.

fregate84 wrote:

steinio wrote:I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

If you don't do that, the unloading is more more slower.

Actually, if I understand Factorio liquid physics correctly, inserting a single pipe segment between two pumps should not affect pumping speed. Pump moves 200 liquid per tick, which is exactly a pipe volume, so everything *should* run smoothly.

Need to test though.

Lav wrote:

fregate84 wrote:

steinio wrote:I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

If you don't do that, the unloading is more more slower.

Actually, if I understand Factorio liquid physics correctly, inserting a single pipe segment between two pumps should not affect pumping speed. Pump moves 200 liquid per tick, which is exactly a pipe volume, so everything *should* run smoothly.

Need to test though.

Afaik a pipe moves 2400/second at most, so a pump with 12000/second (=200/tick) is 5 times faster. But it might be that having just one pipe inbetween would work.

fregate84 wrote:

steinio wrote:I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

If you don't do that, the unloading is more more slower.

FRACTIONALLY...and were talking very small fractions for anything less than 18 pipe segments. 1 pump on the wagon and underground belt to tank would be unnoticeable.

saturn7 wrote:

Lav wrote:

fregate84 wrote:

steinio wrote:I don't think that chaining pumps makes any sense.

If you don't do that, the unloading is more more slower.

Actually, if I understand Factorio liquid physics correctly, inserting a single pipe segment between two pumps should not affect pumping speed. Pump moves 200 liquid per tick, which is exactly a pipe volume, so everything *should* run smoothly.

Need to test though.

Afaik a pipe moves 2400/second at most, so a pump with 12000/second (=200/tick) is 5 times faster. But it might be that having just one pipe inbetween would work.

Pipe flow speed only matters when there are at least two pipes. A single pipe segment between pumps isn't moving anything - it essentially becomes a low-volume storage.

Lav wrote: Actually, if I understand Factorio liquid physics correctly, inserting a single pipe segment between two pumps should not affect pumping speed. Pump moves 200 liquid per tick, which is exactly a pipe volume, so everything *should* run smoothly.

No, volume of a pipe is 100.

[Fluids, Pipes and Pumps]
See above post for testing result.