Factorio Forums

How many off-shore pumps are needed to fill 1 pipeline? I heard 2.5 but from practical testing with boilers/steam engines, I consistently see that 1 off-shore pump fills 1 pipe despite not being at 100 water. I'm asking because it's much easier to build 2 off-shore pumps near the water, and both using 1 pipe rather than having 2 pipes go together.

Strange thing is... when I do run 2 water pipes, 1 seperate for each off-shore pump, and then right at the boilers the pipes cross connect, I get around 80% ish power. if I were to run 1 pipe from both 2 off-shore pumps, I'd get around 60% power (I'd get 50% if I had 1 pump). If I have 2 seperate pipes, 2 seperate off-shore pumps, I get 100% power.

tl;dr how many off-shore pumps to fill up 1 pipeline to boilers? wiki says 2.5, I say 1.2

(also note due to a bug, if you change number of pumps feeding a pipe, you usually need to remove pipes around the area, otherwise they get bad water flow values. Like lower than they should)

There is no such thing as "1 pipe".

A pipe can have any flow rate you want. The longer the pipe, the slower it flows.

If you want a pipe to handle 1 offshore pump, it must be 17 pieces or less.
If you want a pipe to handle 2 offshore pumps, it must be 2 pieces or less.

There is a secret table on https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines that shows the flow rate for various pipes.

so let me get this straight (I added photos after you replied) the reason why I get low power is because 1 pump fills up the pipe 100% anyway, so putting 2 pumps in the same spot won't make much of a difference.

However when I put 2 parallel pipes, after 17 pieces the flow is low. But I have 2x low instead of just 1x low flow. Am I getting that right?

This should be rectified by putting a normal pump on the pipes, right? I did that and I did not observe any difference.

The answer to your question depends on the lengh of the pipes.

An offshore pump provide 1200 water /sec. Where did you see on the wiki that 2.5 numbers ? that would correspond to 3000 water per second, which is possible if you place pump every 2 tiles of pipes ( underground in - underground out - pump - underground in - underground out - pump .....)

If your pipeline consisted only of pumps and tanks and no pipe you could probably use 4 offshore pump at full throughput.

Using https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines to math it out as pointed earlier.

Just match the pump to the boilers. The ratio is 1 pump to 20 boilers. And get rid of those pipe junctions. Run a completely separate line to the next row of boilers

llVIU wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:05 am so let me get this straight (I added photos after you replied) the reason why I get low power is because 1 pump fills up the pipe 100% anyway, so putting 2 pumps in the same spot won't make much of a difference.

You can see the pipe as full of slow moving water, or full of fast moving water, (even if it's not exactly how the game see them) 1 offshore pump sure does fill 100% of the pipe, but if you place many regular pumps in the way, this water will be accelerated.

Really the thing that change is the quantity of fluid moving from one pipe to the next one, you can have a lots of full pipes in a row, sometimes there would be only 25% of each pipes being transfered to the next one ( slow moving water ), sometimes 75% (fast moving ), the difference you can't really see, since the water in both case fill in all the pipes.

hard for me to understand but how about this: minimizing the numbers of pipes used, and having pumps to reaccelerate water. From testing, this is the best that I came up with: the requirement is to have a max of 2 pipes between pumps, otherwise power is lower and lower... 4 pipe gap = 60% ish power.

71.1MW, 72MW is max. P.S. is there any method to put 4 off-shore pumps instead of 2, and double boilers/steam engines to 144MW? Just curious.

Have you tied no pipes, only pumps for 4 offshore pumps ?

----

I've recently, for the first time, ran into fluid issues, so could pay attention to the (0.17) behaviour : It seems like fluid exchangers do show roughly the water consumed per second in their fluidboxes ?
Note that the ones that show "Working" status, all show between 100 L and 114 L of water (a heat exchanger consumes up to 103.1... L of water/s
Note also that the pipe shows from offshore pump to first two heat exchangers :
65 - 60 - 35 - 50 - 25 - 20 - 15 - 30 - 25 - 0 L of water
(yeah, I'm a bit puzzled as to what is happening in the bold sections...)

P.S.: Note that 1200/103.1...*16=0.73... ~65/100 ?

I'm no way an expert but you probably intentionally disconnected the west pump there? Look at your pic, it's missing 1 pipe section. If I were you, I'd first remove all steam tanks in order to get a quick real time reaction on the graphs, then add pumps like I did with max 2 pipes gaps, not 3 or more and see what kind of difference you get.

Or in other words, first go to the extreme where you focus on giving your heat exchangers as much water as possible. See how much difference it makes, then work your way down and remove more and more pumps. When you're done balancing, put the steam tanks back in.

edit: one thing that I want to add to this topic is that the pipe for the off-shore pumps can be as long as needed, I still get exactly 71.1MW no matter how long or short they are. See pic. 2nd edit: apparently it's not 71.1MW, it goes up to 72 MW but just takes about 10 minutes

Yes, as emphasized by the hazard concrete, I intentionally disconnected that pipe to show what happens when water supply is lacking.
This is not a continuously operating reactor, the number of reactors/heat pipes/exchangers/tanks is balanced just right* for 4 fuel cells at 300% efficiency over the 200 seconds' reactor cycle.

*(now that I think of it, I could remove one tank, because I need up to 13.20 of them, and the extra .20 would be covered by the steam fluidboxes in exhangers/turbines/pipes. But it would make the whole design less symmetrical, so eeh...)

llVIU wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:49 am hard for me to understand but how about this: minimizing the numbers of pipes used, and having pumps to reaccelerate water. From testing, this is the best that I came up with: the requirement is to have a max of 2 pipes between pumps, otherwise power is lower and lower... 4 pipe gap = 60% ish power.

71.1MW, 72MW is max.
3364.png

P.S. is there any method to put 4 off-shore pumps instead of 2, and double boilers/steam engines to 144MW? Just curious.

From your picture, there is one thing that seems left untouched for potential result, the hidden section of underground pipes cost for 0 in distance. So if you underground for say 5 tiles, you can skip pumps for no cost in fluid speed/throughput !

llVIU wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:49 am P.S. is there any method to put 4 off-shore pumps instead of 2, and double boilers/steam engines to 144MW? Just curious.

I'll try one thing, but from the wiki it should work if you never use more than 1 pipe between pumps/offshore pumps/boilers.

Yes, I tested and this is the absolute minimum that I can come up with. Thanks for the tip.

I saw from some previous post but it didn't have any logic. The 5 hidden pipes underground do exist. This is just a bug in the game and I'm certain that at one point it will be fixed. It's not like there are pumps underground or such. So when you do this on your maps, keep in mind that in a later version you'll have to go back and fix it.

They actually do not "exist", and so don't have any water in them (unlike items on underground belts). And not certain that this quirk will ever be fixed...

llVIU wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:49 am I saw from some previous post but it didn't have any logic.

So when you do this on your maps, keep in mind that in a later version you'll have to go back and fix it.

Factorio's logic is the way it is , infinite water from a 3x3 tile with a pump that doesnt need power is also magical , maybe it' will change maybe not, i do not fear. It will be interesting to understand how they make this different.

llVIU wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 12:44 pm P.S. is there any method to put 4 off-shore pumps instead of 2, and double boilers/steam engines to 144MW? Just curious.

I have came up with an ugly mess that does the job : I had to tweak a bit the end of the setup because even though the part from offshore pump to first boilers was fine, after that i made fluid junction in two direction several times, so it was annoying to balance them so that no water was filling a tank instead of going to boilers. At the end i had a setup that was stable for 10+ minutes with no tanks depleting slowly.

Ofc you can make a nicer design too

144 KW steam

disentius wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:19 pm 144 KW steam

144KW steam.png

That looks 100% more symetric and regular that's your style i guess nicer.

BUT ( sorry to be picky) you have used 2 differents "pipes", not 1 ! you only have dealt with 2 input 1 ouput junction; not the 1 input 2 output.

Given the mess i made i clearly had time to realise it creates other problem of balancing when you want to use a 1 pipe bottleneck and then divide the flow like if you go for a fancy design like mine where you add random junction everywhere untill it's stable.

I am not sure you can line all those 160 steam engine in one lane, and if you need 2 that's an aestheticly pleasing and more functionnal but different thing

One row, it is. nitpick.

ok i can sleep now

I'm surprised it functions, i guess the pump to boiler to pump throughput you used is better than the boiler to pipe to boiler i could have spent more time on the wiki but it was fun messing around with pumps and tanks, and no split is better that i will remember.

I couldn't came up with such design i don't know how to make such screenshot anyway

i use this:
https://getgreenshot.org/
on fullscreen factorio

The troughput table from the wiki is your friend.
Boilers act strange
Tested

PBBBBP
and
PBBBP

Could not find a pump/tank configuration to deliver the water to all boilers. (Consumption of 160 boilers at full use:16* 30=4800 water p/s)

This one does work, though.

Oh yeah, boilers are a whooole other kettle of fish !
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... cts_myths/
(Note that this is for 0.16, things might work differently in 0.17...)