Factorio Forums

I just went over this Factorio Fluid Mechanics study (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7aC5k ... Iwdmc/view), and, while it is an incredible work, it is still not 100% reliable (or so it seems to me at least. I may be wrong. Therefore I appologize in advance just in case), thus not really worth the effort required to put into to actually understand and implement it into your gameplay (plus I don't know if it still applies and I really have no time nor mood to test it out). Since we want to actually be able to play the game instead of studying it at an academic level, a simple table with information would suffice and the most reliable information would be directly from the source.

Question 1: "Is the table found on https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system under Pipelines accurate? (for Vanilla Factorio)"

Question 2: "What about this formula for pipe throughput https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ation_015/"?

Question 3: "If the formula from question 2 is accurate is there a way to use it to calculate throughput for a line of pipes composed of not only 1 line, but of n pipes next to each other (e.g. a 3x10 pipeline being 3 pipes wide and 10 long)?"

Question 4: "Is there any practical and efficient way to calculate pipe throughput for a pipeline n * m (n long, m wide)? Is there any clear and concise formula/formulas to help us do so?" (I mean, there should be, given the fact that Factorio is coded, and there MUST exist a specific formula/formulas which the game uses to compute the fluid flow through pipes)

Please share that formula/formulas/way/ways so I can start focusing on playing the game again instead of using my free time trying to understand the damn fluid mechanics, which I can't really wrap my head around, and since I am a chronic perfectionist I can't go on playing until I am 100% sure I have a precise, accurate and efficient way to control the fluid flow in my factory.

If you will come with the answer "Check viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19851 out" then please also care to explain the Flow to Distance formula, since it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Thanks in advance for your time and shared wisdom!

1. The table on the wiki is correct. It is the same as viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19851, but swaps the axis and converts to seconds.

4. Side-by-side pipes make the fluid simulation worse in every way. Don't do it.

5. Precise control is impossible in 0.16, because the fluid system uses fractions of a unit that can't be measured accurately.

If you have troubles with long distance fluid transport, remember that you can always use barrelling. Barrels on underground belts resemble underground pipes and in addition don't block movement. For really long distances you can use trains.

Rather than worry about exact formulats, I just maintain full speed pipe transport with a pump every three spans of ug pipe (pump-ug ... ug-ug ... ug-ug ... ug-pump-ug ...) and build close to water supplies.

Thank you for your fast replies. That table is enough for now. I hope that in the future they will come up with a solution to make fluids easier to control even through pipes.