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Gas pumps stuck on one gas after load


ReanaTheRogue
  • Fixed

Gas pumps seem to only output the gas they first started pumping out after a reload or after they are built.  After reloading, some pumps may still be working as you intend, but some may have switched to a different gas.  The pumps will be filled up with all the other gases they intake over time (Contents on the Details tab).  I've tried all sorts of changes past the output (gas filters, gas valves, all kinds of messy piping), but could never get a pump to stop outputting the one gas they are stuck on unless I destroy and rebuild the pump or reload.  Losing power or disabling and re-enabling the pump also doesn't work.

What controls the gas that will be first pumped out is hard for me to tell.  It does seem to consistently choose the same gas when reloading the same save every time.  It seems to be based on the contents inside at reload and not the first gas it sucks in.  For example, I have a pump with mostly CO2 around and it is pumping CO2, but it got a little hydrogen in the area once and it had some in its contents.  If I save when the CO2 is all pumped out (contents show 0.0 kg) and only the hydrogen is left in the contents, when I reload it will pump that little hydrogen and never output all the CO2 it continues to intake.

I can't tell which gas it will choose to pump from the contents after reload.  It's not alphabetical or based on amount of gas or order in the list, as far as I can tell.  Maybe it's the order they were sucked in?

So as a current work around, people can make sure all pumps contain some of the gas they wish to pump when they save (difficult with many pumps).  And, the pump can easily contain many kg of other gas that has filled up in the pump while pumping the gas you want.  So if you save and reload and pump out the bad gas, then save and reload again when there is no bad gas in the contents, you can eventually get it to have the gas you want.

Related to this is the gas filters, which don't really work as intended if pumps are only outputting one gas all the time.  But, they can be used as a safety guard for when you reload and the wrong gas gets pumped out.  Set the filter to send only your desired gas to where you want it and vent the rest back into the room or elsewhere.  You'll never get gas flowing down both routes at the same time, but since all the other gases are stuck in the pump, when you reload you can switch to the other path and then reload again to switch back.  Not user friendly, but I think it can be done.

There are several other bug reports about gas filters, and gas pressure problems, and gas pumps turning off.  But I think most gas pumping problems are related to this.

EDIT: I've added save files with my comment below.


Steps to Reproduce
Have a room with multiple gases and a pump pumping for some time to anywhere (pumping to filters may cause nothing to leave pump depending on the settings). Observe it always pumps that one gas. Pause and check the contents tab, reload, and see what gets pumped. It should behave as described in detail above.



User Feedback


A developer has marked this issue as fixed. This means that the issue has been addressed in the current development build and will likely be in the next update.

I've been told in the General Discussion forum that someone else has seen multiple gases being pumped out of a Gas Pump.  I still have not.  I thought maybe it had to do with what the pumps are ultimately attached to, but that doesn't seem to be the case (or I haven't found the right combo yet).  I went back to just a Gas Pump into a Gas Vent, and they both continued to behave as I've described.

My setup described above (and in the saves I'll attach) is with 1 pump (upper left of base) pumping hydrogen into a Hydrogen Generator and 2 pumps (lower center of base) pumping O2 (left) and CO2 (right) into first a Gas Valve (set to 100%) then a Gas Vent.  Apologies for messy base and hunger/water/power problems (this is my first base).  Power should be ok, since I had just added more manual generators.

The first save "gas test - H O C.sav" will load centered on the 2 pumps at the bottom.  If you check all the pumps before unpausing, you should see the upper left hydrogen pump with some H and O2 in it, when started it will pump out H.  The lower center left O2 pump will have some O2 and CO2, when started it will pump out O2.  The lower center right CO2 pump will have some H and CO2, when started it will pump out CO2.  This is as I desire, but is easily broken.  You can see the other gases build up and never get pumped out of the pumps.

I made a new save "gas test - O O O.sav" just a minute or so later, but saved with 2 of the pumps missing the gas I want to be pumping (i.e. they just pumped out the last of it and contents say 0.0 kg).  This save will also load centered on the 2 pumps at the bottom.  Checking the pumps before unpausing, you should see the upper left hydrogen pump with only some O2 in it, when started it will pump out O2.  The lower center left O2 pump will again have some O2 and CO2, when started it will again pump out O2.  The lower center right CO2 pump will have some O2 and H, when started it will pump out H.  If you watch the pump contents closely, you can see them pump in a gas, but pump nothing out when they are stuck on a gas they can't get.  This is clearest with the lower center pump on the right that's now pumping hydrogen.  There's not much H in the area, so after the initial bits of H get pumped out, it just keeps building up other gases and never pumping anything out (until you reload).  You can also see the problem with the upper left hydrogen pump, that it's now stuck on O2 and will never pump out H (until reload).  It doesn't get much H anymore, since it's got a lot of O2 in the room and I think the hydrogen generator just spits the O2 back into the room right next to it.  But if you wait, you'll see it does still add some H that doesn't get pumped out.

I also noticed that, after a reload and unpause of the same save, it doesn't seem like it will always takes in the same gas in the first pumping, but it does seem like it will always pump out the same gas.  And that seems to be whatever amount (up to 10kg I believe) there is in the pump of the gas that it has chosen to pump (still not sure how it chooses that other than one of the gases in its contents).

Another thing you can notice if you look at the gas overlay is all the gases still queued in the pipes to be spit out at Gas Valves.  This is from before I discovered the problem and reloaded many times while testing allowing the other gases to be pumped out.  At one point there were 100's of kg of O2 in the CO2 pump and when I reloaded after saving with no CO2 in that pump, it spit all the O2 into the line (in chunks of 10kg I believe).

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, since someone else doesn't seem to have this problem, but I thought this might be related to all the gas pumping issues I've seen.  And I sure can't get mine to get unstuck (without rebuilding or reloading).  And the facts that you can get stuck on a gas and reloading at the right time can change which gas it pumps seems to be a bug.

As a side note, reloading alot seems to cause it to take longer and longer to start up after unpausing and longer to exit the game.  This seems like a memory leak issue, but that's another topic...

EDIT: don't know my right from my left, but fixed it above.

gas test - H O C.sav

gas test - O O O.sav

Edited by ReanaTheRogue

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For me it seems that which ever medium the pump is first placed in, that is the only medium it will ever pump. This happens for every game, new and loaded. I have yet to have a pump that will pump more than one medium. It happens for gas and liquid pumps alike. If a gas pump is placed in CO2, it will only ever pump CO2 and "bottle" all other gases. I'm not sure what "bottle" means for the game unless Dupes can somehow use these like bottled water. If a liquid pump is placed in contaminated water, it will only ever pump contaminated water. The only way I have found to fix the pump is to destroy and rebuild the pump while in the new medium. This makes filtering gas or liquid irrelevant. 

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Interesting, that's definitely not the case for me.  If the pump was in the state you show in the last pic (0.0 kg CO2 and lots of O2) if I had paused right then and saved, all of the O2 would be pumped out after I reload and unpause.  Thanks for adding your info.

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I've had the same problem with gas pumps, where they pump only one gas through the output, and store the second gas internally, never pumping it out. Critically, I only have this problem when I add a valve. Before adding a valve, both gases were being pumped just fine, then it would hit a filter that sent hydrogen to the generator, and everything else back into the base. After adding a valve downstream from the filter, the pump never output two gasses again, it would just pump one gas depending on which one it encountered first. After removing the valve, it still wouldn't work, but starting a new game, and never using valves, seemed to fix the problem.

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That may have been be the case with mine as well, since around the time I was adding Gas Valves was around the time I discovered the problem.  But if I recall, the reason I added the Gas Valves was because I was trying to use Gas Filters and not being able to get more than one gas to come through the filter.  This was before I understood you had to hook a line to the purple output in the middle of the Gas Filter.  (To me the graphic looks like the Gas Filter just outputs gases back into the air with the little vent and string that blows periodically.)  But I'm pretty sure my hydrogen pump (upper left of base) has never had anything attached but the Hydrogen Generator.  But it's possible using the Gas Valve breaks all Gas Pumps in the world.  I'll try to do some experimenting with new worlds, but that will take some time).

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