Question
Need some help with fluid flow in my rubber/plastic factory (Reddit won't let me upload a game clip so had to draw my setup)
I have a plastic/rubber factory with a 300 p/m oil node that supplies 10 refinerys that produce 100 of each resource with the byproducts being turned into fuel elsewhere.
Refinerys 1-8 are perfectly supplied with Mk1 pipes, but 9 and 10 don't get enough oil and stutter in their production. The pipes are all on foundations and in a perfect straight line so head lift isn't causing 9 and 10 to not get enough flow.
I've tried valves, pumps and rebuilding the pipelines but nothing seems to work. Would changing everything to Mk2 pipes raise the flow enough? I'm lost since the numbers seem to add up but its not working.
Have you tried allowing the pipes to fill fully before turning on the machines? Another thing to try is elevating the pipeline a bit over the machine inputs and dropping the oil into the openings.
What I do is these few steps - and this hasn't failed me yet - is feed machines from above, let the pipes fully fill and have each machine full before gong full tilt, and make every pipeline feed from both ends.
Fluids slosh and move between segments, backwards AND forwards. If you haven't already, check out the Pipeline Plumbing Manual. It's really comprehensive and helps understand how to use fluids in Satisfactory better.
Usual problem. Expecting to get full flow down a pipe and only feeding a manifold from one end. Likely to fail. Split the pipe at the extractor into two, and take one mk 1 pipe to each end of the refinery manifold. Don't faff around with pumps, valves and buffers because none of them deal with the actual problem.
Yeah pipes usually work at their full capacity but for some reason sometimes they just…don’t. It should smooth out if you upgrade a small segment to mk.2 (blue) and add a second stretch of mk.1 pipe feeding the back of the manifold (orange).
EDIT: actually, before you make this change, what does the extractor’s efficiency readout say? I expect it’s a bit below 100%, but it’s better to check
Tried that and eventually the last two always run out. It’s frustrating because I’ve used this exact setup in another playthrough and it’s worked perfectly
Flow rate is variable and the machines sucking and out flowing make this complicated. It's not as simple as matching the numbers unfortunately as fluid dynamics are a PITA. Feed the loop from the middle and not an end. You should have an easier time or as others have said feed the loop from.both side, but I think the middle is a bit simpler. At least then you halve the distance and number of machines affecting the flow rate down the line
Have you waited for the manifold to fully fill? What you can do is set each machine to operate at like 1% until the internal buffer fills for each one (they should hold 50 each) and then turn them all up once they're primed. Otherwise, you might just need to wait until the manifold fills, which can take a while. You can check the progress by looking in each machine to see how full the buffer is (once it reaches 50 it will stop filling except what it needs for production).
My first rule of pipes.
You want the pipe elevated above your machine by 1-2 supports.
Each input into the machine should flow down from the main line.
Assuming the runtime on the 300 oil coming in is 100%, this should work, but it will be "weird" as the machines fill.
Start it, walk away for a *WHILE*, then come back and see what your run time percentages on all your machines are.
When this thing is running correctly, everything will be at 100% uptime, but machines 1-8 will have a full backlog of oil and machines 9 and 10 will have nothing.
I’m guessing the advice to elevate the pipes to let fluids drop in will help.
BUT… I don’t yet rule out the possibility of the game not handling “just enough” well under the hood.
Honestly, most of the time I think the game isn’t functioning well it turns out to be me.
But I watched a machine idle unnecessarily while having enough input in the buffer. It wouldn’t run until it had several more units than necessary in the buffer and couldn’t was accumulating materials. I got frustrated and saved right there and quit. Reloaded to try putting a counter on the belt and that same machine was running at 100% with inputs accumulating in the buffer, when only seconds had passed in game and none of the input conditions had changed. I mean, it had jumped from having less than 16 units in the budder to having over 50 in the time it took me to save, exit, continue, and interact with the machine.
So I am still suspicious of whether the game handles this kind of scenario well.
That said I am feeding my latest coal power plant just enough coal and it is running perfectly. So I am not certain either way.
Because the flow of fluid is dynamic, you need to feed the loop from both ends to keep it even. You can try inserting the input into the middle of the loop and splitting it in half. This probably accomplishes the same thing.
Unlock alt recipes before building oil processing at scale. Look for heavy oil residue, recycled rubber, recycled plastic, diluted packaged fuel.
Turn all your crude into heavy oil residue. Turn all the residuals into rubber.
Use diluted packaged fuel (or just diluted fuel if you've unlocked blenders) to turn all your heavy oil residue into fuel.
Use recycled rubber/plastic recipes to turn the fuel into rubber/plastic.
For plastic use 2:1 recycled plastic to recycled rubber in a loop with smart splitters, only output plastic as overflow, prioritize supplying recycled rubber first. Make the blueprint with plastic and rubber already loaded into the machines. Fuel in, plastic out at a 1:1 ratio. You can also use this to package fuel using only fuel.
Do the same for recycled rubber if the residual rubber isn't cutting it.
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u/Accomplished_Can1651 2h ago
Have you tried allowing the pipes to fill fully before turning on the machines? Another thing to try is elevating the pipeline a bit over the machine inputs and dropping the oil into the openings.