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Metering Valve, Metering Bottle Emptier, and Enable Autobottling on Pitcher Pump


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These are things related to liquid/gas transport that I run into relatively frequently, multiple times in each playthrough.

Problem #1: I need to deliver certain amount of liquid (less frequently gas) somewhere. Usually it means to build a pump and a pipe, or a pitcher pump and bottle emptier pair. But then I need to keep eye on how much liquid is delivered and cut it when it's about enough. More often than not, I don't catch the right moment and I have to clean up spills afterwards.

It could be nicely solved if there was a Metering Valve (for gas/liquid pipes) or Metering option on bottle emptier. It would allow the player to set total amount of liquid/gas to be transferred (through the valve) or delivered (to the emptier) after which the building would shut down until the player sets a new value.

 

Problem #2: I need to clean up a small puddle that's however big enough to not allow mopping. I can either get creative and dig around the puddle to spread the contents until it's moppable, or build power lines and pipes to get rid of it using a pump.

It would be great if I could just build a Pitcher Pump there and set it to "enable autobottling" which would make duplicants to make bottles of the liquid and deliver them to appropriate bottle emptier (as long as there is one, otherwise they'd do nothing). It would nicely supplement the "enable autobottling" function on bottle emptier - on the emptier, the function is "get this here. wherever it is" and on the pump, the function is "get this away, wherever you put it".

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I especially like the metered gas/liquid valve idea. Multiple times I have some setup that requires a small amount of gas to top it off, but only a specific amount. My chlorine food storage comes to mind, or CO2 for a mushroom farm. If the metered valve could be triggered by automation, to periodically allow only a certain amount of gas through, that would be swell.

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I wonder if they could implement some attachment for connecting a spigot to an existing piped system. Essentially the same function for the pitcher pump, but instead of going to a vent, have it output into bottles.

Probably to much of a niche purpose for removing liquids, and by the time pumps are built, you've probably moved away from bottled liquids anyways, and are using sinks and the grill.

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6 hours ago, crypticorb said:

by the time pumps are built, you've probably moved away from bottled liquids anyways, and are using sinks and the grill.

I use liquid bottles all the time. Filling waterlocks or getting rid of medium size puddles of polluted water/crude/petroleum are main use cases.

Spigot can be made by digging a small hole, putting a pitcher pump into it and filling it with a pipe/vent. I just wish the vent blocked by liquid pressure in all kinds of liquid, not just in water.

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I like the idea of specifying how much to empty at a bottler, having a slider that we can move that decreases as liquid is emptied would do the trick, if you move the slider all the right then it goes to infinity and is continuous and has the logic of the current auto-bottling option.

 

A more complex option for pipes would be If a 'flow sensor' existed and was combined with the pipe-port I proposed you could get a good system to solve scenario #1 by connecting the flow meter sensor to a shutoff valve and setting the meter for a specified mass of material, once it has passed the sensor goes inactive and closes the valve.  Maybe the sensor needs to reset in some way for another measurement, so perhaps we need some kind of new logic game that stays on or off until reset by another source, a bit like the filter and buffer.

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1 hour ago, ImpalerWrG said:

Maybe the sensor needs to reset in some way for another measurement, so perhaps we need some kind of new logic game that stays on or off until reset by another source, a bit like the filter and buffer.

What you just described is called a "latch" or "flip-flop" gate. I've seen a few working examples around here using AND/OR gates, but they are large and awkward for a dual input/single output device that should've been included in the starting package of gates, as it is a fundamental building block of logic systems.

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1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

I've seen a few working examples around here using AND/OR gates, but they are large and awkward

Awkward, maybe a bit, since the reset input is inverted. But I don't think it can be made any smaller.

mimToW3.jpg

 

The one thing I am missing in the current logical circuitry are not latch gates per se, it's latch gates reacting to edge on input. Meaning, the Set and Reset happens when appropriate input changes from 0 to 1, regardless of immediate logic level on the other input. Adding such latch gate into the game would definitely be useful.

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Yes I did a bit of research just last night after posting and a latch is exactly what we need.

I could see two forms, a manual and a automatic form.  They act to record the state of their input signal aka the 'write' data, a small light on the latch turns red or green to indicate this and the output signal is always conforming to that light.  The second control is the 'command' and in a manual latch it would be done by a dube that you command just like on a switch.  On an automatic latch it's a second wire.  When the command is in the active state the state of the write data is recorded to the latch continuously, when it is off the latch state will not change.

I'm feeling that this latch needs to be a different shape so that it's obvious to the player that it is not like other gates.  I think a zig-zag of 4 tiles would work well, the write input and the output are at the ends, and the control input enters in the middle which is also where the indicator light is.  This helps to express that write and command inputs do different things, the write goes 'through' the device and the command is orthogonal to it visually cutting across it's path.

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