Real Pressure

[fract]

Please consider a Real Pressure update that allows vents to intake liquid and gas. For example, when two vents are connected they would try to equalize pressure. The consequences of overpressure would be interesting but more practically vacuum systems can be created without a pump at every intake point.

[Coolthulhu]

Suggested 9000 times, but it's actually impossible.

[fract]

Impossible to write the code? Why? 

Gas/liquid flow direction could be determined by pressure, so pumps would still work. 

Bridges could be multidirectional or set to use a check-valve.

[Fizzy Cyst]

2 hours ago, fract said:

Impossible to write the code?

Not impossible. Impractical at this point in the development and deployment cycle. Such a change would have numerous ramifications throughout the code, not even the least of which would be a need to rewrite every active plumbing and ventilation building, breaking everyone's contraptions as they load up from an old save file. Not exactly great for customer relations. I wrote more on other aspects of this in the post quoted below.

 

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[Coolthulhu]

4 hours ago, fract said:

Impossible to write the code? Why?

The way game handles "pressure" is very strongly unrealistic. For example, one small pocket of "low pressure" gas hanging out near a vent would cause the game to see the vent as low pressure, despite other packets huge. The reverse is also true.

For pressure to work properly, the whole idea of "lava lamp physics" would have to be dropped. And this is probably the most central component of the whole game, and thus one of the hardest to replace.

So it's effectively impossible.

[Tekky]

I would also be in favor of more realistic pressure management. For example, I would be in favor of partial pressure to be implemented, so that one tile can have several types of gases at once.

In my opinion, Factorio currently has a much better pipe pressure system than ONI and Factorio is planning to improve it even further. For the details of these planned improvements, see this Factorio blog entry.

[Sasza22]

36 minutes ago, Tekky said:

Factorio currently has a much better pipe pressure system than ONI

Factorio has pipes transfering liquid based on pressure. ONI has pipes transfering mass. There is no pipe pressure in ONI so obviously Factorio has better pressure lol.

The game suffers a lot from the 1 tile rule. It basically makes pressure really unrealistic and almost impossible to handle in a 2D space. We would need a kind of pocket tile that could store low amounts of gas outside the game grid so it doesn`t block higher amounts from moving and interacting.

As for pipes changing it to pressure based would be a rework on one of the core systems in the game. While it would fix some wierd interactions it would create a lot of problems. Would we consider gravity in the pressure calculations? How would different liquids in the same pipe be handled? Do we treat the pipe as one liquid tank and average everything? The what about heat transfer?

The current system has so many elements that reworking it would require to redo half of the game. It`s not prefect but it`s simple and for the most part works.

[Coolthulhu]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

The current system has so many elements that reworking it would require to redo half of the game.

This.

Pressure is not something that can be added. It's something that needs to be an inherent part of the system.

[Fizzy Cyst]

7 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Factorio has pipes transfering liquid based on pressure. ONI has pipes transfering mass. There is no pipe pressure in ONI so obviously Factorio has better pressure lol.

Really? It seems as though they have more similarity than difference on this point. Here's a line from that Factorio blog post quoted above.

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For a long time I was playing with pressure but I dropped even that in favour of just two variables - volume and speed, where the speed kinda models the pressure as well.

For the record, speed doesn't model pressure well at all.

[Sasza22]

11 hours ago, Fizzy Cyst said:

Really? It seems as though they have more similarity than difference on this point.

TBH i don`t actually know how pipes work in Factorio. I heard it was pressure based. All i know is that there is no pressure in ONI pipes. You put stuff in the pipe with a pump and it just flows along it. No pressure needed. This is why you can make liquid loop endlessly with just a bridge and no power usage. There is no liquid speed as well. It just moves at the same pace. There is just a max mass of liquid in the pipe. It always moves from the green arrow to the white one and sometimes gets confused in complicated setups (this is where you need to use bridges to keep the flow steady).

[Lurve]

Factorio pipes would be great.  I just can't wait until I have to tear out an entire system of pipes because one drop of a different liquid got in somehow and now nothing else will flow through them again.