One way pipes

[Naomi Yuki]

This is something that would certainly be useful for me. I have a water system that flows from a little tank to my base and back filtering out contaminated water for treatment but that flow often gets confused and tries reversing (right now its all jammed up because of this) Adding a 'one way pipe' to the game that basically tells the flow that hey you go the other direction would at least prevent the water system from getting all confused. Its also a thing in real plumping called a Non-return valve there rather small too just being a little bigger than the pipe. This would at least allow flow control and could be added to the Tier one plumping research to allow better management of where it goes. 

 

[Oozinator]

17 minutes ago, Naomi Yuki said:

.. Non-return valve

Is a liquid bridge not similar to that?

[Naomi Yuki]

I dunno I never considered using a Liquid bridge as a non-return valve as I only thought of it as a utility to cross pipes. I'll see if that corrects my flow issues.

 

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Okay Ran the test and no, flow still isn't working correctly. If anyone wants to take a crack at getting the plumping to flow correctly here is a save file;

 

Its meant to; come from the lake on the left, flow along the snake, get split into pure and contaminated, the contaminated gets purified and then its all returned to the start of the system

 

you can ignore the right side lake its just there to be emptied 

Perfect Cosmos Badflow.sav

[Coolthulhu]

The liquid system is a fair bit confusing at first, but what you want here is to learn how it works and then use valves and bridges.

You need to build your system in such a way that it is always one-directional. Imagine all outputs outputting all the time and all inputs taking inputs all the time. If there is more than one way the flow could go in such a situation, you need to restrict your system more.

[AileTheAlien]

Pipes in the game act like pipes in real life[1]. One end is the supply, and the other end expels water. If the pipe has a split in it, it's going to either split the outgoing flow (like  the pipes which split from the main line in a house, into all of the faucets), or collect all the flows (like all of the sewage pipes which run from each toilet into the main line for a house).

Your base in the game has pipes going in all directions for input and output, which won't work. Your pipes need to be built so that everything will flow from the outputs of your supply buildings (pumps, the output of a toilet, etc), to the inputs of the other buildings (water vents, input of a toilet, etc). You also need to have separate pipes for your clean and dirty water, so that the wrong fluid doesn't go into the wrong place.

[1] In general. You don't need to worry about frictional losses or pressure drops.

[Naomi Yuki]

52 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

The liquid system is a fair bit confusing at first, but what you want here is to learn how it works and then use valves and bridges.

You need to build your system in such a way that it is always one-directional. Imagine all outputs outputting all the time and all inputs taking inputs all the time. If there is more than one way the flow could go in such a situation, you need to restrict your system more.

If you check that save file I restricted a part of the flow to 1 direction only and it had no effect. 

[saltyteabag]

You'll need to have a separate set of piping dedicated to handling polluted water, which doesn't directly connect to your supply of clean water.  I modified your save file to show you what I mean.  One thing to keep in mind is that the water sieve and liquid filter don't remove germs, so it's good to have a separate source to use for making food.

PerfectCosmosGoodflow.sav

[blash365]

I am currently using bridges to direct the gas/liquid flow of my pipes. It works like a charm for me.

Alternatively you might also be able to use valves (and filters ofc).

[AileTheAlien]

On 1/5/2018 at 3:09 PM, Naomi Yuki said:

If you check that save file I restricted a part of the flow to 1 direction only and it had no effect.

You need to have your entire plumbing system separated, with different pipes for each fluid.

[Silly Sausage]

I really like this idea, so I got it working for you. However, your downstream appliances will get a bit of "wrong element damage" due to the contamination of the water.

Basically you have to think at each point along the pipe, does the water know which way to flow. If there is only pumps to the left and vents to the right it works fine. But if at any point there is a mixture in either direction you need to add in a single direction pipe such as a liquid bridge. Liquid valves should work too, but you can't put them inside walls. You'll notice the input to appliances on lines where the water travels left to right are more convoluted because the input is infront of the output. You could probably design it as a ladder rather than a snake and have your flow always right to left. Although that creates a parallel system which might cause flow rate issues.

Good luck with your plumbing, thanks for giving me some ideas for my own!

PerfectCosmosGoodButContaminated.sav

[glenalec]

The game's implementation of fluids has always bugged me (and not just that on many appliances the water intake is lower than the drain  ). I would have preferred a fluid system that has a better sense of pressure, so that if you have a split pipe and one branch is backed up it will still feed the other! And fluids don't get jammed if you have multiple outputs feeding into a pipe and don't plumb it /just/ right! I have found using liquid bridges can ameliorate the issues a good bit, but a single-tile back-flow valve would likely be neater!

Also. Supplying water in a defined comfortable-hot range to showers/sinks could get a cleaning and de-stress bonus? (too-hot burns them, but!, so you might to have a more advanced shower/basin variant with hot and cold water inputs, so the dups can set a temperature they like - assuming it is between the two input temps: if both temps are too hot, they get burned and if both too cold, they get cranky!).

[Master Miner]

A pipe system is working (mostly) as expected only if there is at least one pipe segment in it where all intakes in the system are on one side of it and all outputs in the system on the other side of it.

In other words, for each pipe segment, there has to be one side of it that has only inputs but no outputs, or only outputs but no inputs. Or it can be true for both sides - which (implication) has to be the case at least for one segment.

If you have a pipe segment which has both outputs and intakes on both sides, then the ONI won't know in which direction the liquid shall flow. It seems that the developers tried something there, but it isn't working and it happens that the flow gets stuck and you have to destroy and rebuild few pieces to make it work. This is even sometimes the case if you follow the above rule.

One way pipes would be nice since bridges and vents take much more space.

Actually as it is implemented now, all pipes could be one way, as bidirectional flow doesn't work.

[Maciej75]

I hope that pipes system is just alpha version.

It has many problems, most notably - inability to keep maximum throughput, if one of branches has valve that limits flow. Similar problems when happened in Factorio (problems with belt compression) provoked "violent protests"

So one-directional pipe may not be needed so much in full version.

[Kasuha]

33 minutes ago, Maciej75 said:

I hope that pipes system is just alpha version.

It has many problems, most notably - inability to keep maximum throughput, if one of branches has valve that limits flow. Similar problems when happened in Factorio (problems with belt compression) provoked "violent protests"

So one-directional pipe may not be needed so much in full version.

I'm pretty sure the pipes will stay mostly the way they are. Yes they're unrealistic but the mechanic has so many benefits that I'd regret if it got significantly changed.

But I agree that there are still some problems, particularly behavior of junctions is not optimal. This will hopefully get improved eventually. There already were some improvements done but I think devs don't consider it top priority.

If you want to retain maximum throughput with a valve on a branch, consider using the valve itself to branch it off. It will create a priority joint, but the flow in the main branch will keep being continuous as long as the supply is sufficient.

By the way, all pipes are technically one-way. While the piping system may get confused and some segments may start juggling packets back and forth, longer streaks of pipe can only work one way in all cases. Some people found that an inconvenience in the tubular challenge map recently.

[Maciej75]

6 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Yes they're unrealistic

I am fine with this system, this puzzle fits in overall style of this game. I only meant that router needs fixes, so small onaway pipes not needed.

6 hours ago, Kasuha said:

consider using the valve itself to branch it off.

So this was so simple... I was adding more pipe segments, hoping that they can buffer liquid