Factorio Forums

So I made this little refinery setup. Don't mind the two unconnected chemical plants, those will be used to crack oil once I've researched the technology for that.

My question is: Why does almost all petroleum flow from the petroleum tanks to the sulphur plant, and almost none to the plastics production? I find that strange, because the path from the tanks' output to the plastics plant is two tiles less far (5 tiles total) than the path to the sulphur (7 tiles total).
^^EDIT hmmwwait I looked wrong. It's 6 tiles for both, there is not difference in pipe distance after all. Still, the question remains, why does it not distribute more equally.

Does the game fluid pathing not pay respect to pipes, but instead just looks for the shortest path from the petroleum source output (the refinery) to the demand destination?
Would replacing the upper output tile from the tanks with a single pump pumping north (once I've got the tech) ensure that the plastic production gets at least one pump's worth of pressure in petroleum?

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =18&t=7305

This topic is practically the same as what you have here and has a reference to another topic with the same problem.

Replacing the pipe with a pump would help, but it may also end up diverting all of the flow, instead of just part of it. :-/
Fluid dynamics are a bit fuzzy/wonky, and the only real way to guarantee equal distribution to all connected pipes is to produce more than needed.
You might have a valid hypothesis for testing though, why don't you look into it? Even if you don't find a definite answer, you'll have gained a good deal of experience with fluid handling, which will serve you well in your future games.
Also, why are you storing water in tanks? I'd be surprised if you managed to efficiently(key word) route all your water-needed processes to the same pump, which is the only practical case in which you might ever use more than you could create on demand.

I believe I fixed my problem, without even using pumps. Added a second refinery. Here's the complete setup, including the pumpjacks. I think I didn't do too poorly for my second try at a refinery The heavy and light oil tanks come with preinstalled pipe loops, so I can add a prioitizer pump later, if I want to make lubricant, for example. Open space reserved for it on the east side of the setup. There's also plenty of space left to add another refinery if I ever want to bring in more oil with barrels. Oh, and the water tanks.. I just thought they looked nice haha.