Water Physics

[GaladWarder]

Currently, water interacts very strangely with it's surroundings. Here are a few examples:

-Pipes cause it to no longer flow; it will get caught up and stuck if there is a grid of piping near it.

-It overreacts to dripping coming from high areas, splashing a disporportionate amount of water back up. (I.e. a trickle causes whole blocks to splash up)

-Contaminated water currently seems to be counted as heavier than normal water, which could be intentional, but doesn't make sense to me

-Water does not always flow down on flat surfaces, it sometimes will settle if it is under a half block worth.

 

Also, a suggestion:

Maybe create a "water tank" block which creates rounded sides and can support piping or wiring running through it? This would allow players to not have to rely as heavily on gravity to sort out their water supply; they could create a tank and pump water into it, or simply line existing caves with tank siding to help the water 'behave' a little better. Also, being able to run wiring through the blocks (or pipes), would make H20 management in general much easier.

[yungmew]

- I dont understand this issue
- Liquids work in tiles with mass, and every drip is its own entity attempting to make a new tile of water or merge with existing ones. Could use work.
- Contaminated water obviously carries the mass of its contaminant, makes sense.
- The mopping option would be moot if water perfectly attempted to disperse over the ground.

[Crimeo]

I always got the impression that duplicants were basically supposed to be very, very, tiny, like ant-sized. Thus, water would be behaving entirely appropriately at that scale. Basically, it has higher apparent surface tension if you're very small, which causes all of the effects listed above.

For example, notice that a single drop of water stays in one place on the table when you spill it and forms a little dome. It does not just spread out over a flat surface infinitely. Same if you have two nearby objects, it will form a bridge between them and thens top flowing. If you are ant-sized, this would look precisely like it does in the game.

[JonathanSmith]

I figured it was lower gravity, which one might expect if they were in space. Low gravity means surface tension has a larger effect.

[chromiumboy]

But mass values for dupes and the various in-game materials make more sense if dupes are human-sized. And the rate that materials fall doesn't give an impression that gravity is low enough to cause some of the more interesting fluid behaviours. A bug in the way the game simulates fluid dynamics seems more likely

[Kruleworld]

I don't like how water can stick to or climb the wall as if really tiny

6 hours ago, Crimeo said:

I always got the impression that duplicants were basically supposed to be very, very, tiny, like ant-sized.

.

 

[RomulusWB]

I have been noticing the lack of flow in water quite a lot, even causing systems like this one to malfunction because the water is huddled to one side. I wasnt sure if the water physics are being affected by items on the floor, the carbon dioxide in the air but that would be highly unlikely, or the presence of the buildings, pipes, wires ect. The water has remained in this position for many cycles.

[Saturnus]

16 hours ago, yungmew said:

- Contaminated water obviously carries the mass of its contaminant, makes sense.

That would make sense if contaminated water was denser than clean water. That is not the case though. Contaminated waters listed density per block is typically 80% that of clean water, and yet it always sink to the bottom.

[Luponius]

I only agree with the physics in general.  I'd like water to be a bit better flowing and less "reactive" to everywhere else.  It might make sense to have a higher surface tension but as some posts above with images have demonstrated, it can be just simply frustrating and pointless to have water act haphazardly like that.  I think it should at least be looked at a bit and be made a little more predictable.

[AlexRou]

Speaking of physics ... contaminated water + water does not make all the water contaminated which is weird 

[calminginsanity]

In the real world, layers can be made in the same carrier (water) using different concentrations of an additive such as sugar.... temporarily.  Eventually, they will mix....  Here is a fun science experiment!

Sugar water density tower

[AlexRou]

8 minutes ago, calminginsanity said:

In the real world, layers can be made in the same carrier (water) using different concentrations of an additive such as sugar.... temporarily.  Eventually, they will mix....  Here is a fun science experiment!

Sugar water density tower

Yeah but taking into account contaminated water dropping into water causes it to slash around a lot that's highly unlikely  

[Luponius]

Would make sense to possibly have contamination instantly mix (all water contaminated, at a lower contamination intensity) and slowly, over a few cycles it would start to sink to the bottom, making it possible to skim clean water from the top (turning on a pump when water is clean) and funnel contaminated water from the bottom (also worth mentioning that pump input should be possible to have piping extended to them for both gas and liquids.

[Crimeo]

4 hours ago, Luponius said:

Would make sense to possibly have contamination instantly mix (all water contaminated, at a lower contamination intensity) and slowly, over a few cycles it would start to sink to the bottom, making it possible to skim clean water from the top (turning on a pump when water is clean) and funnel contaminated water from the bottom (also worth mentioning that pump input should be possible to have piping extended to them for both gas and liquids.

This is a much broader issue that is needed for the entire game: partial pressures for gases being the same problem. (each tile having any number of types of gases in mix). I would not be surprised if they were already planning this, since it's pretty obviously a limiting factor to a lot of cool possibilities. If I had to guess, I'd say it probably slows the game too much right now and they are waiting for optimization to get away with it.