Factorio Forums

Transferring from a tank one could presume the pump transfers like normal fluid transfers: by percent/balance (seemingly). If you hook a pipe up to a tank it will only be filled to the same percent the tank is.

Hooking a pump to that pipe, you'll only pump a very little amount, so the output flow is low and limited.

If you hook up the pump directly to the tank, it seems to pump by amount, so you can get a much greater volume/rate if the pump is moved from pipe to tank.

Were the behavior consistently quantity, I'd expect a pipe to fill to 100 when connected to a tank with > 200. If the behavior was consistently percent I'd expect the pump on a tank to pump at the slow rate of a pipe. A guess could be pump-logic is quantity, while flow logic is percent?

I would expect a pump to move fluid at its rate (200 per tick) and to not act under normal fluid transfer behavior.

The pump will pump its designed amount per tick except if the output is full or the input empty, this is how it is supposed to work and as far as I can tell how it works.