Water valve issues.

[Ruckus]

Jesus Christ the liquid flow system in this game is maddening. Is there a reason why my water valves refuse to turn on and off? Do they need duplicate input to change flow rates? Are there known bugs or certain ways they have to be built to function properly? 

I've got a toilet block water loop with a Water Sieve that has a top-up valve and a drain valve so I can hopefully tune it to a stable level. But my valves simply don't work and they're both letting water through at an unrestricted rate.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Valves require duplicant interaction to change their rates. It is handled by the 'toggle' priority.

It also appears you have some confusing piping set up.  There are several posts about using bridges to both prioritize flows and control the direction of flow.  

For example, using a bridge (with the green side towards your toilets) at the split toward "Drain" will ensure that your pipe to the toilets is always full and that only any excess will ever flow towards "Drain."  

[madcat1188]

I sometimes run into problems with piping systems having multiple sinks and sources, for both liquid and gas pipes. Seems like sometimes it can't figure out which direction the blob of liquid or gas is supposed to go. Water valves and bridges can help since they enforce direction. Also, never run a pipe over top of of a sink or a source (the white or green arrows), always branch off. Also, you might want to have the fresh water output from the water sieve also go to a liquid valve, and have the two liquid valves (one from the water sieve and the other from the external source) side by side and have one unit of pipe out in front before they join, like this:

That setup has always worked well for me when trying to get two sources to merge into one.

It does require duplicant operation to change the setting on the liquid valves, and sometimes it can take a long time for them to get around to it, and you need it done right away. I wish they had a priority setting for liquid and gas valves.

[Ruckus]

Thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the advice. Definitely gives me a few things to look into. I think half of my issue is that I'm only running 6 Dupes and they're not covering all my Operation commands quickly enough - I've been having problems with switch activation too. And I'll chase up those articles about the correct use of bridges as that sounds really handy.

Thanks again!

 

Edit: I hadn't even noticed the Toggle priority option