Bottle job? Or tales of regret of things I wished I had realised a long time ago

[Saturnus]

Clickbaity title aside, what are you on about?

Well, everyone at some point needs to make liquid bottles. And while between the pedestal and pitcher pump you got a decent selection of options on how to get them.

You can also empty pipes with a plumbing skilled dupe but I'm thinking most people probably missed a most obvious ways to get them; the demure hydroponic tile.

If you empty storage on a hydroponic tile you get a 5kg bottle (if there's enough liquid in the tile storage). And the dupe doesn't need to have the plumbing skill to do so.

Why might this be a disruptive change to your game? Hydroponic tiles have a pipe input (well, duh). I repeat, they have a liquid pipe input which means you just need a pipe from your infinite storage or put on a pipe anywhere on the map, even in space, and you can make bottles without having to first spill some into a pool or on the floor.

Hydroponic tiles also unlike pitcher pumps have no overheat limit so if you want magma bottles that's an option too, provided you have the magma piped already obviously. And the metal it is made from can tolerate the heat.

The ejection rules are quite strange though. as they depend from which direction the dupe is emptying the storage. If emptying from above, the bottle appear on the top, unless there's a tile on the left side then it goes right, and vice versa. From below it drop directly, again depending on the tiles around the hydroponic tile itself.

More experiments on ejection rules are required though. Especially if you use this trick to make natural tiles directly out of ice or refined phosphorous as examples by emptying storage of supercooled hydroponic tiles.

Anyway. Hope it helps or inspires someone, somewhere. And a special shout out to Burt without whom I wouldn't have this wonderful if somewhat incognizant illustration.

Edited February 22 by Saturnus

[Zarquan]

I had a build that required entombing the bottom tile of a pneumatic door.  I found that plumbing a pipe in that scenario would never eject the bottle of glass in the door.  The hydroponic tile did not have this problem, ejecting the bottle in the bottom tile of the door. 

I have 2 other mechanisms for creating bottles of liquid that I like.  

First, a liquid tank module, when filled, can instantly eject the liquid stored without dupe interaction.  Same with gas tanks.

Second, if you need a lot of bottled liquid (multiple tons), there is always my trusty liquid bottler, capable of bottling up to 100 kg/second.

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/147767-polluted-water-bottler-polluted-oxygen-factory/

Edited February 23 by Zarquan

[Saturnus]

The thing I like most about the hydroponic tile method is that often, especially late game the 1kg pedestal bottle is often too little. 5kg is more less the optimum size and saves the hassle of having to have a pitcher pump and a pedestal. And to get a bottle you have to set the liquid type, the dupe then pumps it, moves it, and displays it. After which you have undisplay it again. A multi-stage process that the hydroponic tile does in one go.
Should be noted that emptying storage several times just adds 5kg liquid to the already existing bottle if you want slightly higher volumes.

Edited February 23 by Saturnus